German police seize fake Picassos in multi-million euro forgery raid

BBC:

Bavarian police have seized millions of euros worth of forged art claiming to show works by Picasso, Rembrandt and Kahlo in an operation spanning Germany, Switzerland and Liechtenstein.

Authorities in Bavaria said the main suspect is a 77-year-old German man who, along with 10 alleged accomplices, is facing charges of conspiracy and fraud.

Investigators first became suspicious when the septuagenarian ringleader attempted to sell two supposedly original paintings by Picasso on the art market.

He then wanted to sell De Staalmeesters, a famous oil painting by Dutch old master Rembrandt, for 120 million Swiss francs (£113m) – despite the original hanging in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.

The Bavarian State Criminal Police Office (BLKA) said the forged De Staalmeesters – which is sometimes referred to as the Masters of the Clothmakers’ Guild – was owned by an 84-year-old Swiss woman.

She is now being investigated by the Amberg public prosecutor’s office, the BLKA and Swiss authorities after the forged piece was confiscated in Switzerland.

At the time, after being examined by an art expert, the police said: “It was, as suspected, a copy and not a lost masterpiece by Rembrandt van Rijn.”

The painting was seized during a co-ordinated series of dawn raids across Germany, Switzerland and Liechtenstein on Wednesday 15 October.

During the searches, a large number of suspected art forgeries were found and seized, the BLKA said, along with “documents, records, mobile phones, storage media and cloud data”.