New York Post
Peter Fearon
Old Masters, worth $5 million and believed to be in the hands of dissident members of the IRA, may be smuggled to New York to be exchanged for guns, according to art experts. Stolen art is increasingly being used to barter for large amounts of drugs or arms, as stringent international currency restrictions make it more difficult for criminals to move large sums of money.
Last Tuesday, an armed gang drove a Jeep through the front door of stately Russborough House, a sprawling private estate about 20 miles from Dublin owned by members of the wealthy DeBeers diamond family.
Three men leaped from the Jeep, picked two multimillion-dollar paintings out of dozens on the walls, and methodically sliced them out of their frames with boxcutters. The brazen robbery took less time than it takes to boil an egg - and bore all the hallmarks of a carefully planned IRA operation.
The stolen paintings are "Madame Bacelli" by Thomas Gainsborough, worth at least $3 million, and "View of Florence" by Bernardo Belotto, worth about $2 million.
Police in Ireland believe that the so-called "Real IRA," a splinter group that opposes the U.S.-brokered Irish peace process, is behind the art heist and wants to use the paintings to buy arms.
A source in the Royal Ulster Constabulary in Belfast told The Post, "This is a very worrying development. The Real IRA has been starved of funds, which has made them ineffective. But the wealth a raid like this could bring them would make them very dangerous indeed.
"They would most likely turn to underground arms dealers in New York, Boston, Miami, Central Europe or the Middle East," he said.
Irish police Chief Superintendent Sean Feely said, "The paintings would be impossible to sell on the open market because they are so well known."
But selling the paintings may not be necessary.
"Some of the paintings which have been stolen in recent years would be quite difficult to dispose of on the legitimate market," said top art investigator Bob Spiel, of Spiel Associates in Chicago.
"But if you exchange the art for drugs, then you get something which can be turned into cash, while the supplier of the drugs does not have the hassle of breaking the cash into $10,000 bundles and laundering it."
"It's a trade that has been brought about in part by the success of stricter currency controls and banking regulations," Spiel said.
Experts believe that circulating in the shadowy world of stolen art are 350 paintings by Picasso, 270 by the Spanish painter Joan Mir, 250 by Marc Chagall, 175 by surrealist Salvador Dali, and 120 Rembrandts worth between $2 million and $20 million each. Also on the loose are 114 works by Renoir, two Turner landscapes worth at least $12 million each, and a Titian worth up to $20 million.
Detective Ruben Santiago of the NYPD Major Case Squad told The Post that disposing of the proceeds of art robberies is often more challenging for criminals than the robbery itself.
"Think of it as a kidnapping. In a kidnapping case there is the snatching, the hiding out and safeguarding, and then the negotiations for a ransom.
"The biggest part is the exchange. That's when the criminals usually trip up."
But exchanging works of art for drugs or weapons is considered to be less risky, he said.
A Justice Department source told The Post they had intelligence reports of several incidents in which art, presumed to be stolen, had been used to buy large amounts of cocaine from drug lords in Cali, Colombia, and heroin from importers in France and the Far East.
Even the Drug Enforcement Administration has gotten in on the act.
"I have heard of cases where the DEA has conducted sting operations exchanging drugs for art," Santiago said.
"Eventually the art is returned to the legitimate market, sometimes by variations on what I call the grandmother's attic story," Spiel said.
"Someone turns up at an auction house or an art dealer's with a Rembrandt and says, I found this is grandmother's attic. I don't know where she got it, what it is, or how valuable it may be.' There's no paperwork.
"The dealer makes a valuation. He will check to see if it is missing or stolen, but often not very thoroughly. They may be tempted by the commission."
OFF THE WALL: Members of an IRA splinter faction drove this Jeep through the front door of the Russborough House near Dublin, then stole two multimillion-dollar paintings off the walls, authorities say.Irish Times
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