Six Picasso prints worth €100k recovered one month after moonlight theft – as seven men are arrested
Picture:
Compagnie de gendermarie departementale
Six Picasso prints stolen from a restaurant near Cannes have been recovered after a month-long police investigation.
The works were stolen from L’Amandier in Mougins in the early hours of 1 October, when two masked men allegedly broke in through a French door.
In less than a minute, the pair allegedly headed to the restaurant’s Picasso room, removed the prints from the walls and fled.
A third suspect is believed to have waited nearby in a vehicle.
The restaurant owner, an art collector, discovered the theft later that morning, triggering an investigation by the Cannes research brigade.
Nearly a month later, around 40 gendarmes raided two apartments on the French Riviera after weeks of surveillance and phone monitoring.
The prints, worth more than €100,000, were found intact, hidden beneath clothes and toolboxes in a bedroom.
Seven men aged between 18 and 30 have now been arrested, with detectives believing the group included the alleged burglars, handlers of the stolen artworks and accomplices who provided logistical support.
Lieutenant Colonel Guillaume Plaidy, commander of the Cannes gendarmerie, said officers knew their “window of opportunity was relatively limited”.
“We had to act quickly: Works like these carry a high risk of being resold and never returning to the art market,” he said.
Mr Plaidy added that the artworks were not easy to sell, saying the suspects were acting opportunistically rather than as art-market specialists.
“They were known more for drug and weapons offences” and did not have the contacts to move such works quickly, he said.
Leisa Paoli, director general of the FAMM museum in Mougins, said: “We are delighted to be able to recover them; I thought they might have already left the country.”
Restaurant manager Matthieu Autant said he had “not slept for a month” and admitted security arrangements may now need to be reconsidered.
The case comes amid heightened concern over art thefts in France, following the recovery of two Renoir paintings stolen from a museum in Cagnes-sur-Mer earlier this year.
Mougins is the village where Picasso spent his final years before his death in 1973.
