Brazen Art Heist Nets Robbers $163 Million In Masterworks

They were works of an era long gone, incredible once in a lifetime masterpieces that can never be replaced. And they were all worth a fortune.

The hunt is on in Switzerland for a gang of armed thieves who staged what police are calling a “spectacular art robbery”, stealing four paintings estimated to be worth $163 million. The heist, which took place on Sunday in Zurich, occurred at the Buehrle Collection, a private Swiss museum.

Emil Buehrle was a World War II businessman who amassed a fortune by selling anti-aircraft cannon to the Nazis, even though his country was supposedly neutral. The money he made from that endeavour allowed him to put together one of the most prestigious and admired collections of impressionist art in the world.

The bandits entered the building just before closing, and one of the ski-masked men forced the employees to lie on the floor at gunpoint, while his two colleagues raced through the complex. They apparently knew exactly what they wanted, taking masterpieces by Claude Monet (“Poppy field at Vetheuil”); Edgar Degas ( “Ludovic Lepic and his daughter”); Vincent van Gogh (“Blooming chestnut branches”) and Paul Cezanne (“Boy in the red waistcoat,” pictured at top left).

A reward of $91,000 is out for information on the thieves or their haul. All cops know about the men is that one of them spoke German with a “Slavic” accent and all three were about 5’9″ tall. They loaded the four paintings in a waiting white van and fled the scene. Investigators believe some of the works may have been too large for the getaway vehicle and were sticking out of the trunk.

The brazen theft follows the disappearance of two Pablo Picasso masterworks that were also taken by armed marauders at a nearby cultural centre last week. So far, police are unable or unwilling to reveal if the two are related.

An APB has gone out for all the paintings but getting them back is another matter. Interpol has a large database of recently stolen artwork that it’s on the hunt for, including items boosted from Canadian homes and museums. It’s a growing list that has more than 30,000 entries, a measure of just how common the problem is. 

Another website, called the Stolen Art Directory, hasn’t been updated since 2006, but shows the incredible range of works that have been pilfered and the large rewards being offered for their return. Many of the missing works have been gone for decades and have never turned up.

Officials claim gunpoint robberies are rare, since it puts the spotlight on the works and makes them harder to sell.

But that doesn’t mean they can’t be moved. Unlike other stolen property, such as jewelry or cars, some unscrupulous but wealthy collectors don’t care about the origins of the one-of-a-kind works – they simply want them for their private collections. And the art can disappear into someone’s remote mansion without being on public display, making the missing works virtually untraceable for generations, if they’re passed down to discreet family members.