SACHA PFEIFFER, HOST:
There's been yet another heist at a museum in France. Early this morning, two thieves broke into the former villa of the artist Pierre-Auguste Renoir. It's now a museum. The thieves made off with four paintings, but they dropped two of them in the museum's gardens as they fled from arriving police. Here with details about what happened, and to explain why these high-profile thefts keep happening in Europe, is reporter Rebecca Rosman. She joins us from London. Hi, Rebecca.
REBECCA ROSMAN, BYLINE: Hi.
PFEIFFER: So tell us what you know at this point about what happened.
ROSMAN: So we know that just before dawn, two thieves, they cut their way through a fence and quickly ran into the museum, grabbed four paintings. And here's the town's mayor, Bryan Masson, speaking to French media shortly after the heist.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
BRYAN MASSON: (Speaking French).
ROSMAN: So he described the thieves as being, quote, "well equipped and well informed." And he also said that the police did arrive at the scene within five minutes of the museum's security alarms going off, and that did make a difference.
PFEIFFER: What paintings did they make off with?
ROSMAN: So they made off with two paintings. One of them is called the Young Woman at the Well. The other's called Portrait of Madame Colonna Romano. And they were both painted during France's Belle Epoque era, which is around the late 19th and early 20th century.
PFEIFFER: Any sense, Rebecca, of what those stolen pieces could be worth?
ROSMAN: France's culture minister did give an estimate for the four pieces taken off the walls at around 9 million euros, so that's about $10.5 million. You could say the value is at least half of that for those that are still missing because, remember, they left two in the garden as they were making their getaway. And I'd imagine there was also some damage to the two pieces that they left behind.
PFEIFFER: You know, the puzzle of these high-profile thefts is that it is difficult, presumably, for these thieves to turn around and sell them because authorities are already on the lookout for these specific works of art. So what about that aspect?
ROSMAN: Yes, that's a very good point. So with a lot of these heists, the thieves steal things like gold and silver coins or jewelry because those are pretty easy to hide on the black market. The gold and the silver gets melted down. The jewels are pried apart and sold for parts. But with paintings, it's different. You'd think no one would want to touch them. They're almost radioactive, right?
But then I was reminded of an interview I did earlier this year with Arthur Brand. He's a Dutch art detective who helps recover stolen objects. And he told me these pieces are actually quite valuable to certain criminal gangs because they use the stolen paintings as bargaining chips. Brand gave me this scenario where he presented himself as a Mafia boss who secretly owns a pair of stolen van Goghs. Then, let's say he gets arrested on something serious like drug trafficking.
ARTHUR BRAND: And then when they want to give me 20 years, I can say, look, I have two stolen van Goghs, which is world heritage. Why don't we cut my sentence in half? I will give them back. So it's a little bit of blackmail.
PFEIFFER: Ah, so some negotiating leverage.
ROSMAN: Exactly. Negotiating leverage. And I should say, you know, not all countries allow these types of deals. The Netherlands does not, but Italy does. I can't say who was behind this Renoir heist or what the motivation was, but it's something to keep in mind.
PFEIFFER: Do authorities have any theories on why this keeps happening?
ROSMAN: So one thing I've been told is that people have actually been inspired by other recent successful heists. There have been at least 10 major art heists in the last year alone, and Europol, the EU policing agency, says there has definitely been a rise in these types of crimes. Criminals have picked up on the various lapses and shortcomings of museum security, and they see an opportunity to make a buck. I mean, a big buck, right? The Louvre jewels that were stolen last year were valued at over a hundred million dollars.
PFEIFFER: What, if anything, is the French government or European authorities doing to try to prevent these sorts of thefts from continuing to happen?
ROSMAN: So I can say that the Louvre Museum quickly announced a new security plan after last year's heist, and the plan's worth $92 million. That includes adding around a hundred new security cameras, anti-intrusion systems and antiramming systems to prevent people from being able to enter the building. So France's culture ministry also published a plan in July to address these types of robberies, and that plan included several dozen measures from mapping out the most vulnerable sites to recruiting specialized police forces at museums and hiring extra security for particularly high-value works.
PFEIFFER: That is reporter Rebecca Rosman in London. Rebecca, thank you.
ROSMAN: Thank you.
(SOUNDBITE OF DAVID HOLMES' "$160 MILLION CHINESE MAN") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
