Lighting raids save masterpiece

SERBIAN and Swiss police recovered a Paul Cezanne masterpiece, stolen from a Swiss museum in 2008, and captured four men as they tried to sell it.

In Belgrade, officials played a video showing how police had arrested one of four suspects in a Belgrade suburb and found the painting in the roof upholstery of a black van. They handcuffed the driver and dragged him away.

Clearly proud of the police raids, officials displayed The Boy in the Red Vest, by the French impressionist, with two masked Serbian special police armed with machineguns standing alongside it.

A Swiss expert authenticated the oil-on-canvas painting, which was stolen from the E.G Buhrle Collection in Zurich along with three other masterpieces by Claude Monet, Vincent van Gogh and Edgar Degas.

Zurich prosecutors also said the museum had certified that the painting was the original by Cezanne.

The work was worth $105 million when it was stolen by three masked gunmen who, witnesses said, spoke German with a Slavic accent in what was one of the biggest art thefts in Europe at the time.

"I think this is really an impressive action conducted jointly with Swiss police," said Miljko Radisavljevic, Serbia's organised crime prosecutor.

He said four men, including the leader of the gang that conducted the robbery, were arrested in raids in Belgrade and the central city of Cacak.

Soon after the 2008 robbery, Monet's Poppy field at Vetheuil and van Gogh's Blooming Chestnut Branches were found in a car parked at a mental hospital in Zurich.

About a year later, Degas's Ludovic Lepic and his Daughter, worth about $11 million, was returned to the Swiss museum after a reward was paid to an unidentified person, Serbian officials said.

Serbian Interior Minister Ivica Dacic said the police raids, planned since 2010, took place when the suspected robbers decided to take the Cezanne painting to a wealthy Serb who agreed to buy it for $4.6 million. Mr Dacic said nearly $2 million in cash and firearms were found with the four arrested men.

"Of course, they could not sell the painting for its real price," Mr Dacic said. "It's amazing standing beside this masterpiece."

He said one of the arrested men was the leader of the gang that conducted the robbery, while the three others were believed to be accomplices in the crime.

They would stand trial in Serbia, Mr Dacic said.

Art experts suggested the robbers took advantage of low security at the Swiss museum without knowing the paintings or how difficult it could be to sell them.