Marie Gicquel, edited by Maxime Asseo 11:43 a.m., January 30, 2023
This Monday opened in Nancy the trial of a Ukrainian in his sixties accused of being the mastermind of a group of art thieves.
The man was notably at the heart of an incredible theft in 2018. He had stolen "The port of La Rochelle", a painting by the master of pointillism, Paul Signac.
It is the trial of an "Arsène Lupin of modern times" or a "Ukrainian Thomas Crown" which opens this Monday in Nancy.
The man in question is suspected of being the mastermind of an art trafficking network.
He is notably accused of being at the heart of an incredible theft in 2018 where he would have stolen
The port of La Rochelle,
a painting by the master of pointillism Paul Signac, estimated at more than 1.5 million euros.
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"Cut out in the middle of the day"
An admirer of Arsène Lupin, the sixty-year-old forger with a versatile physique had stolen the painting, barely larger than a newspaper, thanks to a very special technique worthy of the best Hollywood scripts.
"Signac's painting had been cut out in the middle of the day," says Colonel Berger, head of the Central Office for the Fight against Trafficking in Cultural Property (OCBC).
After cutting the work without moving the frame or triggering the alarm, the thief then rolled it up like a parchment before shipping it to Ukraine, where the painting was recovered, before returning safely. port, at the Museum of Fine Arts in Nancy.
“We were able to identify a team of four individuals from Eastern countries,” adds Colonel Berger.
Arrested a year after the theft of the work, the burglar also appears for the theft of other paintings, including one by the famous painter Auguste Renoir.