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Reuters<\/p>\nReuters<\/p>\n
Forged art claiming to show works by famous artists, including Picasso and Rembrandt, has been seized by police<\/p>\n
Bavarian police have seized millions of euros worth of forged art claiming to show works by Picasso, Rembrandt and Kahlo in an operation spanning Germany, Switzerland and Liechtenstein. <\/p>\n
Authorities in Bavaria said the main suspect is a 77-year-old German man who, along with 10 alleged accomplices, is facing charges of conspiracy and fraud.<\/p>\n
Investigators first became suspicious when the septuagenarian ringleader attempted to sell two supposedly original paintings by Picasso on the art market.<\/p>\n
He then wanted to sell De Staalmeesters, a famous oil painting by Dutch old master Rembrandt, for 120 million Swiss francs (\u00a3113m) – despite the original hanging in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.<\/p>\n
The Bavarian State Criminal Police Office (BLKA) said the forged De Staalmeesters – which is sometimes referred to as the Masters of the Clothmakers’ Guild – was owned by an 84-year-old Swiss woman.<\/p>\n
She is now being investigated by the Amberg public prosecutor’s office, the BLKA and Swiss authorities after the forged piece was confiscated in Switzerland.<\/p>\n
At the time, after being examined by an art expert, the police said: “It was, as suspected, a copy and not a lost masterpiece by Rembrandt van Rijn.” <\/p>\n
The painting was seized during a co-ordinated series of dawn raids across Germany, Switzerland and Liechtenstein on Wednesday 15 October.<\/p>\n
During the searches, a large number of suspected art forgeries were found and seized, the BLKA said, along with “documents, records, mobile phones, storage media and cloud data”. <\/p>\n
Bavarian police said the main suspect attempted to sell a further 19 counterfeit works, purportedly by world-famous artists for between \u20ac400,000 (\u00a3349,000) and \u20ac14m (\u00a312.2m). <\/p>\n
They included copies of work by Mexican painter Frida Kahlo as well as Flemish old master Peter Paul Rubens, Italian sculptor Amedeo Modigliani and Spain’s Joan Mir\u00f3.<\/p>\n
He was assisted by 74-year-old German man who “prepared expert reports specifically to confirm the authenticity of the artworks”.<\/p>\n
The BLKA said that he and the main suspect were arrested on the day of the raids before being conditionally released.<\/p>\n
The police said that the investigation is in progress.<\/p>\n
“Among other things, all confiscated paintings will be examined in detail by experts and appraisers in the coming weeks,” police said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Reuters Forged art claiming to show works by famous artists, including Picasso and Rembrandt, has been seized by…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":237141,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[76,354,355,49,48,356,75],"class_list":{"0":"post-237140","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-artsanddesign","11":"tag-ca","12":"tag-canada","13":"tag-design","14":"tag-entertainment"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237140","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=237140"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237140\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/237141"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=237140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=237140"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=237140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}