Stolen Art Hampers Ukraine's EU Progress
Dec 9, 2015 2:01 PM EST
By Leonid Bershidsky
A bizarre episode involving two dozen stolen paintings by old Dutch masters shows how far Ukraine still has to go before it becomes a European nation -- and explains why many Dutch people have misgivings about ratifying Ukraine's association agreement with the European Union.
The Westfries Museum in the idyllic Dutch town of Hoorn was robbed in 2005. The thieves took some old silverware and 24 17th-century paintings by relatively little-known but accomplished artists: Jacob Waben, Floris van Schooten, Steven van Duyven, Jan Linsen. Some hold the eye even in reproduction: Waben's lusty "Vanity," depicting a wealthy lecher making a pass at a young coquette, or Henrik Savrij's pastoral landscape with grazing cows and a distant town. The museum put the value of the stolen art at 10 million euros. "The heart of our collection is gone," a museum spokesman lamented.
Art thieves who are not hoping to get a ransom or are working directly for unscrupulous collectors often settle for second-tier works: They are easier to move around and sell. They like minor museums, too, because they are often inadequately guarded. There is little chance paintings are ever returned, although miracles happen: Last summer, five minor masterpieces stolen from a depot where two Amsterdam museums kept them were spotted at a British auction and recovered.
The Hoorn thieves were evidently more careful. As it transpired, the works ended up in a mansion in eastern Ukraine, the home region of deposed Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych, where his cronies had amassed vast fortunes by running illegal coal mines and numerous other rackets.
The Hoorn museum's keepers found out about the paintings' reappearance in July, when two Ukrainians showed up at the Dutch Embassy in Kiev claiming to represent a volunteer battalion fighting the Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine. They explained they had found the paintings in the mansion; it's not clear who the home's owner was, but he probably fled the fighting or escaped to Russia with most of the Yanukovych team.
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http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-12-09/stolen-art-hampers-ukraine-s-eu-progress
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