Romanians admit £15m art theft

Three Romanians have pleaded guilty to stealing seven paintings, including works by Picasso, Monet and Matisse, from a Dutch museum in a raid that shocked the art world.

Radu Dogaru, Alexandru Bitu and Eugen Darie, told a Bucharest court they took the paintings, valued at around £15m (€17.5m), from the Kunsthal Museum in Oct 2012. They have not been recovered. The thieves, who were arrested in January, said they smuggled the paintings into Romania, tried to sell them on the black market, then left them with Dogaru’s mother, Olga Dogaru.

Radu Dogaru told the court that when he stole the paintings he thought they were fakes. “I could not believe you could enter as easily as that,” he said. He said they were handed over to a Russian Ukrainian man whom he identified and wrote the man’s address on a piece of paper for the court. The name was not publicly confirmed.