The Art of Stealing - NRC - NL

25/07/2022, 12:42 The art of stealing - nrc.
nl
The art of
stealing
The tragic fate of the masterpieces stolen from
Rotterdam
By Lex Boon
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and programming:
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Illustrations:
Illustrations: Aloys Oosterwijk. Translation: Michele Hutchison
Aloys Oosterwijk. Translation: Michele Hutchison.. Photo
Photo
editor: Arjan de Jongh
editor: Arjan de Jongh..
The heating stove in Olga’s bathroom. She burned

the artworks in it, she stated in a police interview.
Photo Mugur Varzariu
Olga is on her own. Her son is in prison, being held on

suspicion of having committed what they are calling on
television ‘the art theft of the century’. She knows that
the accusation is correct. Along with friends, her son
Radu stole seven valuable artworks from a museum in
Rotterdam, loaded them into a car and drove them to
Romania.
https://www.nrc.nl/kunsthal-en/ 1/53
25/07/2022, 12:42 The art of stealing - nrc.nl
There, in Carcaliu, a remote village at the poor south-

eastern tip of the country, Olga stands in front of the
heating stove in the bathroom. A short while ago she lit
the fire then stepped out into the biting cold, making her
way to the small graveyard opposite her house where, in
the dead of night, she dug up the paintings and brought
them back inside.
Picasso, Gauguin, Matisse, Monet, Meijer de Haan and

Freud. On television they are talking about a loot worth
hundreds of millions of euros. The amount is not
important to her. The pictures are evidence against her
son and destroying the evidence seems like the only way
she can help him.
The artworks go up like tindersticks.
Early in the morning of 16th October 2012, seven valuable

artworks were stolen from the Kunsthal in Rotterdam. The theft
was world news. But what first seemed like a sophisticated
burglary by professionals, turned out to be the work of a few
small-time Romanian criminals who had no idea what they were
getting themselves into. They knew about house burglaries, not
art, and they certainly didn’t know about selling art.
This is the story of the Kunsthal robbery, based on the case files
and conversations with those involved.
The alarm
an Moerer is first awoken by the sound of his mobile telephone
J ringing, then his landline. It is 04:28 in the morning. The

Kunsthal’s production manager gets out of bed but is twice too
late to pick up. The missed calls are from colleague Gert-Jan
Knoll, the building supervisor. He calls him back.
An alarm has gone off. Paintings

may have been stolen.
Half an hour later, Moerer is

walking through the building with
two security guards. The Van
Gogh is the first thing he sees as
he enters the exhibition space.
Still Life with Cornflowers and
Carnations, one of the Triton
collection’s key pieces, is still
where it should be. It is a painting
of an exuberant bouquet of
flowers that Van Gogh painted in 1887, a blue vase with blue
cornflowers against a blue background. Jan Moerer is relieved.
Then they turn the corner. Seven empty spaces.
A white spot marks where one of the stolen pieces

was mounted. Foto Robin Utrecht / ANP
he Kunsthal, literally meaning ‘art hall’, on the periphery of the
T Rotterdam city centre does not have its own collection and isn’t
really a museum in the traditional sense of the word. The
Kunsthal is dependent on artworks loaned by other art galleries
and private collectors. Each year, 160,000 people visit the temporary
exhibitions set up in three large rooms, collectively a space of 3,600
square metres.
At the Kunsthal there are no security guards at night – cameras and

alarms do all the work. Mobile guards from the security company
Trigion can be on the scene in twenty minutes if the alarms are
triggered. The police are alerted too.
That night, Mehmet Karadurdu and Jordy Rook are driving through a
rainy Rotterdam on their inspection rounds of the various companies
that buy into Trigion’s services. At 03:20 they get a call from the control
room. A burglar alarm has gone off at the Kunsthal on the Westzeedijk.
Their PDAs show them the quickest route to the building. When they
arrive eleven minutes later, the police are already on the scene. It had
taken the officers just five minutes to get to the Kunsthal.
The Kunsthal is a At the Kunsthal there are

labyrinthine building full
no security guards at
of glass partitions, which
signalled architect Rem night – cameras and
Koolhaas’s international alarms do all the work
breakthrough. It is
constructed so that some of the works are visible from the outside, like a
kind of showroom. When they arrived, the policemen walked around the
outside of the eccentric building. They didn’t notice that any of the
paintings were missing. They were primarily looking for signs that
would point to a break-in. There aren’t any, they tell the newly-arrived
Trigion security guards. The officers ask whether they need to stay. No,
if there are no signs of a break-in, they can go, the guards tell them.
Nine times out of time it’s just a false alarm.
When Karadurdu and Rook enter the Kunsthal, the security system’s
control panel tells them that various alarms have been activated in
exhibition space 1 where for the past ten days 150 pieces from the Triton
collection have been hanging. They try to turn off the alarms but don’t
succeed. When they take a look in the room, the alarm on the rear
emergency exit is blaring out.
The guards turn on the lights. They see the empty spots on the wall, the
hooks and wires where artworks should hang. Karadurdu suspects that
paintings belong there – next to the empty places are cards with
information about the works, but the guards do not draw the conclusion
that the paintings have been stolen. Perhaps they’ve been taken down
momentarily for maintenance? The alarm on the emergency exit is
ringing, but it is still locked and there are no signs of a break-in.
The control room call the emergency contact number they have for the
Kunsthal. Building supervisor Gert-Jan Knoll picks up. Should some of
the paintings be missing? Knoll doesn’t know and immediately gets Jan
Moerer out of bed. He, in turn, hurries to the Westzeedijk, as he tries
and fails to get hold of director Emily Ansenk.
***
s soon as Moerer realizes that there really has been a break-in,
A he asks the two security guards to call the police. At 05:02,

more than an hour and a half after the burglary, Trigion’s
control room reports a ‘successful break-in’.
In the exhibition space, Moerer makes a list of the works that have
disappeared: Picasso, Matisse, Gauguin, Meijer de Haan, Freud and two
Monets. Moerer is the first person to realize the extent of the robbery
which will soon become world news.
Just over ten minutes

later, at 05:15, the police
arrive once again, exactly
two hours after two
young Romanian
https://www.nrc.nl/kunsthal-en/
R i 6/53
young Romanian
criminals forced the

Kunsthal’s fire exit and
made off with seven
works with a total
insurance value of 18.1
million euros.
Photo Robin Utrecht / ANP
The criminals
he plan to steal art was engineered a few weeks previously by
T Radu, who at 28, is the oldest of a small Romanian criminal

gang active in Rotterdam.
From the moment they moved to the Netherlands in the summer, the
young men have been breaking into homes. They’ve brought their
girlfriends from Romania with them; the girls are now working in
prostitution.
Now it is time to up their game, Radu thinks. Art is worth a lot of

money, he’s heard, and money is the reason the four Romanian twenty-
somethings came to the Netherlands in the first place.
***
Radu grew up in Carcaliu, a small village in poverty-stricken south-east

Romania. No one is surprised
he has ended up on the
criminal circuit. His family are
known in the village as thieves.
According to villagers, they
haven’t had any paid work
since the revolution, yet they
have still been able to find the
money to start building a
monstrous villa on the edge of
the village. Radu dropped out
of school and caused a lot of trouble, just like his father who, for the past
couple of years, has been serving a prison sentence for assault on
another villager. Nonetheless, the muscular Radu still managed to win
over the prettiest girl in the village, the nineteen year-old Natasha.
Eugen and Alexandru are friends of Radu’s.

They grew up in Măcin, a small town nine
kilometres from Carcaliu. Life there is not
much better. The inhabitants have never got
used to the sudden transition from communism
to capitalism. In this part of Romania, they
haven’t felt any of the advantages of Romania
joining the EU in 2007. Houses are falling down, unused bus stops rust
away and the roads are terrible. The land is still farmed using horses
and carts. The Danube has been emptied of its fish stocks. Europe
seems far away. The population of Măcin has dropped by 40 percent
over the past decade. Half of the 1,617 houses in Carcaliu are empty.
One thousand of the 1,250 inhabitants are pensioners.
Alexandru, a tall muscular man of 23 is the first to leave for the

Netherlands in June 2012, along with his girlfriend, Ștefania. There’s
money to be earned in the Netherlands, even if it is from prostitution.
Ștefania gets her customers through the

website www.kinky.nl. She receives
them at home in an upstairs flat above a
shopping street in the Oude Noorden
part of Rotterdam so that Alexandru can
offer her protection.
Over the months that follow, Radu and Eugen

and their girlfriends relocate to the Netherlands
too. Adrian, another good friend of Radu’s
suddenly leaves Carcaliu in the summer. A few
weeks later, friends read on Facebook that he
too has joined Radu’s Rotterdam crew.
“I can’t tell you

much yet but
there’s been an
art theft.”
t 07:18, a reporter from RTV Rijmond is the first to

announce news of the burglary on the radio. After
that things move fast. Within an hour, the robbery
A is major national news. Over the course of the day,
the international media follow.
In the hours following the theft very little new information is released.
The police spokesperson repeats the same thing all morning: some
works of art are missing and in the interests of the case no further
information can be released at present. The photographers can see
through the glass façade that one artwork in any case is missing. The
photo of an empty space on the wall appears on every news site. The
information card on the picture reveals to everyone what is missing.
Everyone assumes that it was a well-planned burglary.
The plan
n Saturday 6th October, ten days before the Kunsthal robbery,
O Radu and Eugen set off in search of possible targets. They have
no idea where to start but the car’s navigation system provides
an answer. Eugen types in ‘museum’, whereby they are
directed to the Natural History Museum. That’s no use. Stuffed birds,
fossils and seashells are not going to be an easy sell. Then posters draw
their attention to another nearby museum, the Kunsthal.
“Avant-gardes, the Triton Foundation’s collection”.
The posters promise a

“remarkable
exhibition”, compiled
from a private
collection which has
“developed into a
world-class collection
that includes works by
the most important,
most influential
Brochure Kunsthal (PDF, Dutch)
artists.”
Radu and Eugen buy tickets to check out the “one hundred and fifty
works of top international quality” but leave the building after half an
hour. The exhibition doesn’t open until the following day. Their hands
in their pockets, Eugen and Radu stroll indifferently around the sixteen
monumental bronze statues by Frenchman Aristide Maillol, also on
show at the time. The sculptures weigh hundreds of kilos. That’s no use.
If they are going to steal art it has to be portable.
That evening, Adrian, the youngest of the gang at just twenty years old,
is brought up to speed on the plans. The plot will involve just three
people: Radu, Eugen and Adrian. Alexandru will not be involved.
The next afternoon they return. Eugen takes his girlfriend Andreea with
him so as not to draw attention to himself. They walk hand in hand
through the Triton Collection’s space to get a closer look. Radu and
Adrian go to the exhibition too, but they pay more attention to the
security than the twentieth century avant-garde artworks.
The fire exit is the weak link, Radu tells Eugen after the visit. He thinks
that the door can be opened at any time with very little effort. Even from
the outside. Just like burgling a house. There are only artworks in the
exhibition space, no cameras.
The decision is taken. They will attempt to rob the Kunsthal.
The Kunsthal (bottom left) from above.

Security footage from the Kunsthal
ver the following days, several trips are made to the museum’s
O surroundings. Radu goes jogging around the Museum Park a

few times to reconnoiter the area. They drive to the Kunsthal
after dark to see how busy it is. They discover that there are no
guards in the building at night.
Some practical issues are arranged too. In a Chinese shop they buy large
bags made of black raffia to carry the canvases. They get the sim cards
they’ll use in their phones that evening. The clothing of choice falls on
black hoodies.
On Thursday 11th Once they’ve forced the

October, six days before
door and entered the
the break-in, Radu pays a
last visit to the museum, building, there will be a
this time alone. He Matisse on their
spends two hours there
immediate right
going over the plan, step
by step. He and Adrian
will commit the burglary together. Once they’ve forced the door and
entered the building, there will be a Matisse on their immediate right.
After that, over to the other corner where Meijer de Haan, Gauguin and
Picasso are hanging next to each other, and opposite them, a Lucian
Freud. Before they’ve completed their round they can take the two
Monets. Within a couple of minutes they’ll be back outside again.
The choice has been made of seven moderately-sized paintings. They

are all of a “manageable size” as the police will note down in the first
statement. Including their frames, none of the works are larger than
70cm x 70cm. Hopefully they won’t be too heavy, Radu thinks.
The date is set for the night of Friday 12th October. But it’s a clear night,
they will be too visible. And there are too many people about on a Friday
night. The next night, the same story.
On the night of Monday 15th October, the weather is cloudy and rainy.
The break-in
ugen is a burly young man. Like his friends, he has a shaven head, but
his white-blond hair and
E pale, chubby face make
him look less tough.
Eugen, 24, is the only one of the
group who already has children.
He and Andreea have a three
year-old daughter,Emma. She
stayed behind in Măcin where
she is being cared for by family
members.
Eugen desperately needs cash, it is important that the burglary be a

success. His family home is at risk of being repossessed, the bank wants
30,000 euros.
The plan is that Radu and Adrian will commit the burglary. Eugen will
take care of transport, he knows of a suitable car. Alexandru has a red
Peugeot 306 parked outside his house that he doesn’t use.
The evening of the robbery, Eugen drives to Alexandru’s house. He

suggests grabbing a bite at Kapadokya, a kebab shop on the Witte de
Withstraat which always stays open until half past five in the morning.
They often go there. Eugen also asks whether he can have Alexandru’s
Peugeot. He promises to give him a thousand euros the next day for it.
It’s all fine by Alexandru. He doesn’t ask any questions, not even about
the many phone calls that Eugen makes to Radu that evening. He knows
nothing of their plan to rob the Kunsthal.
Kapadokya isn’t far from the Kunsthal, about 750 metres. Eugen will
park the car on the Westersingel, walking distance from the museum.
He will leave the boot unlocked so that Radu and Adrian can put the
loot in it after the burglary.
In the small, cheerless kebab shop with its aluminium tables, Eugen and
Alexandru order themselves pizzas.
***
he Kunsthal’s fire door is equipped with a panic system: in case
T of emergency, the door always has to be able to be opened from

the inside. When the bar on the inside of the door is pressed
down for a few seconds, the electronic lock is deactivated. The
push bar then opens the mechanical lock.
The important thing is for this only to be possible when there are people
in the building. At night the electronic lock must stay activated,
certainly if someone tries to enter from the outside.
What exactly went wrong Two minutes and 48

in the Kunsthal is still not
seconds later they are
clear but Radu and
Adrian were not hindered back outside on the wet
by the electronic lock. The grass
police think it possible
that the two young Romanians knew how to activate the panic system
by banging hard against the door from the outside. This could have
deactivated the electronic lock. After that the only thing stopping them
was the mechanical lock.
And Radu has enough experience of mechanical locks. This is how he

carries out most of his home burglaries. You insert something between
the door and the doorpost, you push back the latch and you’re in.
Radu and Adrian enter the museum at 03.16.51 hours, 72 minutes

before Jan Moerer is awoken by a phone call. The artworks are not
alarmed. They are fixed to the wall by cables but it doesn’t take much to
pull them away.
Two minutes and 48 seconds later they are back outside on the wet
grass. They have closed the door behind them.
Bewakingsbeelden seq3
he loot is heavier than expected and the three packages are difficult for
the two men to carry. Radu calls Eugen and asks him to bring
the car a little closer to the Kunsthal. Eugen runs outside,
T leaving Alexandru alone in the kebab shop.They agree to meet

at the crossroads of the Westerzeedijk and the Westersingel,
about 300 metres further along.
Radu and Adrian load the paintings into the boot and get in. The plan is
to drive to Radu’s house now, but Eugen gets nervous about the number
of police cars about. He parks the red Peugeot on the Coolsingel, the
main artery to the Rotterdam city centre.
They walk to Radu’s house which takes about half an hour. They’ll pick
up the car later, when it’s a bit busier out.
The victims
he alarm goes off at a quarter to seven local time. It’s an hour
T later in Istanbul where Kunsthal director Emily Ansenk is on

the road with a delegation from the Rotterdam Economic
Development Board. Her days have been filled with visits to
exhibitions, excursions, readings and dinners.
She looks at her telephone which is on mute – seven missed calls, all
from members of staff. She calls back immediately, realizing that
something must be seriously wrong.
There’s no time for emotions. The next call, still in her pyjamas, is to the
Cordia family to tell them that seven valuable works from the Triton
Collection have been stolen.
***
he Cordia family’s art collection is one of the top 200 in the
T world in terms of size. Willem Cordia, who died in 2011 at the

age of seventy, earned his money from the port of Rotterdam.
Business magazine Quote estimated his net worth at 330
million euros.
He and his wife Marijke began collecting art in the 1970s. As they
bought, they developed both their taste and their collection.
After a heart attack in 1996, Willem decided to take things easier. This
marked an important moment in his development as a collector. The
Cordias decided to collect at least one painting by each of the great
masters of modern art. Together they collected around 250 works by
more than 170 artists - an almost encyclopedic compendium of the
twentieth century.
The Cordias decided to share their art collection with the public, not by
founding their own museum but by lending out the collection
indefinitely. Rather than waiting to be asked for works, they combed
exhibition calendars to see where they might be able to contribute
something.
The Avant-garde exhibition was the first time the works had been
presented as a single collection. The Kunstal robbery leaves a gaping
hole in the Triton Collection which the Cordias have been so generously
lending.
LUCIAN FREUD
1922, Berlin - 2011, London
Woman with Eyes Closed (Emily Bearn)
(Vrouw met gesloten ogen), 2002
Olieverf op doek
LUCIAN FREUD
1922, Berlin - 2011, London
Woman with Eyes Closed (Emily Bearn)
2002
Oil on canvas
i
PICASSO
1881, Málaga - 1973, Mougins
Tête d'Arlequin
(Hoofd van een harlekijn), 1971
Pen and brush in black ink, colore
brown wove paper
PICASSO
1881, Málaga - 1973, Mougins
Tête d'Arlequin
(Head of a Harlequin), 1971
Pen and brush in black ink, colore
brown wove paper
JACOB MEIJER DE HA
1852, Amsterdam - 1895, Amsterdam
Zelfportret
circa 1889-1891
Olieverf op doek
JACOB MEIJER DE HA
1852, Amsterdam - 1895, Amsterdam
Zelfportret
(Autoportrait), circa 1889-1891
Oil on canvas
HENRI MATIS
1869, Le Cateau-Cambré
La Liseuse en Blanc et Ja
(Lezende vrouw in wit en
Olieverf op doek en karto
HENRI MATIS
1869, Le Cateau-Cambré
La Liseuse en Blanc et Ja
(Woman reading in White
Oil on canvas mounted o
he is on the phone even as director Ansenk packs her bags. At a

S quarter to two Dutch time, her flight from Istanbul lands at
Schiphol. The Kunsthal has stayed closed that day. The staff
were sent home and visitors were met with a closed door. “Due
to the robbery that took place last night in the Kunsthal, we will be
closed to the public today,” the note hanging there says.
Kunsthal director Emily Ansenk and chairman of the

board Willem van Hassel during the press conference
in Rotterdam. Photo Robin Utrecht / ANP
part from the Matisse, the public do not yet know which
A paintings have been stolen. At 17:00, three hours after landing

at Schiphol, Ansenk makes a statement to the journalists
gathered.
“What happened is a nightmare for any museum director.

Despite the Kunsthal’s state-of-the-art security, seven major
works from the Avant-gardes exhibition have been stolen.
They are works by Picasso, Matisse, Lucian Freud, Meijer de
Haan and two works by Monet. These are unique works which
have been shown all over the world. They are well-
documented and were shown together here for the first time.
We, the Kunsthal and the board of the Triton Foundation are
shocked by what has happened but we won’t be beaten by this.
We have taken the joint decision to open the exhibition again
tomorrow and everyone involved would like the public to
continue to enjoy this kind of exceptional art collection, a
private collection. I would also like to say that this act has hit
the entire art world and the museum world like a bomb.”
OAnsenk refuses to say anything about the value of the artworks. She
makes no comment about the security system, “pending investigation”.
Board chairman, Willem van Hassel, at her side, she limits it to her
statement. No questions are answered, there’s just one more thing she
would like to add:
“All of the works are described and registered

internationally: they are not sellable.”
Radu and Natasha’s house above hairdressing salon

Chiq le Frique in the Jonker Fransstraat.
Photo Marco de Swart / ANP
The getaway
he three art thieves sit together in Radu and Natasha’s house
T above hairdressing salon Chiq le Frique on the Jonker
Fransstraat, a shopping street in the centre of Rotterdam.
Around six in the morning, less than three hours after the
robbery, Radu and Eugen returned to the Coolsingel to pick up the car.
At the time, the police investigation was in full swing two kilometres
away. Just before sunrise, they took the paintings from the car boot and
carried them upstairs and hidden them in the hall cupboard. But what
now?
Stolen art is registered in an international database, the Art Loss

Register, making it pretty much unsellable. At art fairs like the Tefaf and
auction houses like Christie’s and Sotheby’s, the register is consulted to
check the works on offer haven’t been stolen.
The idea that rich art

lovers commission art Art thieves rarely know
thefts is a myth. Art what they are going to do
thieves rarely know what
with their loot
they are going to do with
their loot. Sometimes it
turns out to be a vulgar hostage situation – artnapping. Asking the
insurer for ransom money is the only way the thieves can cash in on
their loot. An intermediary informs the insurance company that the
works can be returned for a finder’s fee, an amount that is a fraction of
the market value. This is an attractive offer to the insurer who stands to
lose the insured sum otherwise.
This is an option the three Romanian thieves are not aware of. Art is
worth money. You should be able to capitalize on that, surely. Radu
decides they need to go to Belgium. There, in Brussels, he knows
someone who might be able to help, the mysterious George Moise, a
man about whom little is known aside from his nickname, ‘George the
Thief’.
***
adu and Eugen
R haven’t slept when

they get into the red
Peugeot at around
08:00 that morning and head
south. The paintings remain in
the hall cupboard. They fill up
with petrol somewhere near the
Dutch-Belgian border. When
they spot cameras at the petrol
pumps they decide that it might not be that sensible to return to

Rotterdam in the same car.
At about ten in the morning, they meet George in a café in Brussels city
centre. They tell him they have some stolen art and show him an
exhibition flyer depicting Lucian Freuds Woman with Eyes Closed, one
of the paintings they stole that night. Might George know of a buyer?
He doesn’t but he can help them with the car. He takes the Peugeot 306
and drives it to a small inland harbour on the Charleroi-Brussels canal.
There the car is destroyed by the recycling company A. Stevens & Co.
Radu and Eugen return to Rotterdam by train. It’s time to sleep.
“Good afternoon, this is the

NOS news at one o’clock. The
Kunsthal is open again. And
there’s sport news, Aicha?”
“Yes, the Dutch football team

beat Romania 4-1 yesterday.”
urning on the television more than 24 hours after the art
T robbery, they realize they’ve made the news. And not just in the
Netherlands. Eugen gets a shock.
He discusses the impact of the robbery with Radu. Eugen wants to leave
the country as quickly as possible and return to Romania. Radu thinks
it’s a good idea if he takes the stolen artworks with him.
That evening, on Wednesday 17th October, they take the paintings from
the hall cupboard and remove them from their frames. Without the
frames, the stolen paintings are even smaller, most of the works aren’t
much bigger than a sheet of paper. Only the two pastel drawings by
Monet are a little larger, about the size of a tabloid newspaper.
Andreea doesn’t understand what’s going on. Her boyfriend Eugen

didn’t come home the night before last. He finally showed up the next
evening but then went straight to bed. “Something to do with work,”
he’d said. Now he wants to drop everything and rush back to Romania.
On Thursday evening, Radu and Eugen put the

paintings in the boot of the Eugen’s Ford
Mondeo. He loads the rest of his belongings
into the car too because he’s not planning on
returning to the Netherlands. He tells friends
he ran over a cyclist, that’s why he’s fleeing the
country. Andreea is going with him.
As they leave Rotterdam behind, Andreea is amazed that Eugen is in

such a hurry. He drives without stopping, almost two whole days,
around 2,500 kilometres. Over the border at Venlo, past Frankfurt,
Vienna and Budapest. They sleep in a cheap hotel, just over the
Hungarian Romanian border. Then on to the other side of the country,
to the area they left a year ago, where the Danube flows into the Black
Sea.
Radu flies out a few days later on Sunday 21st October, leaving from
Brussels Zaventem airport. He knows someone in Carcaliu who might
be able to help them find a buyer.
The large-scale research team searching for clues

around the fire exit. Photo Robin Utrecht / ANP
The investigation
he evening after the theft, the public prosecutor decides to set
T up a large-scale investigative team, a TGO [Team Grootschalig

Onderzoek] in Dutch. These teams are used to working big
cases, they are well attuned to each other and have all the
necessary research tools. The investigation is named TGO Art. Twenty-
five officers are assigned to the case.
They immediately go into “storm phase” – police jargon meaning that

speed is of the essence. The crime scene is combed for any trace of the
intruders. There isn’t much. Small signs of forced entry on the
emergency exit and finger and footprints in the hall. A single camera
with very poor image quality has recorded the break-in.
A door-to-door search is conducted, art experts are consulted and all the
most obvious scenarios are laid out. Flyers and electronic boards call for
witnesses. To prevent further thefts, that same afternoon fourteen large,
black planters are placed in front of the glass façade at the side of the
museum.
The Friday after the theft, security footage is released and broadcast on
Opsporing Verzocht, a Dutch crime watch show. More than a hundred
helpful tips come in. People supply names, leads and art gangs. It makes
for a lot of work because everything has to be followed up and ruled out.
The tips don’t bring the police any closer to the suspects.
Due to the lack of “We don’t even know

information, there is a lot
where to look for the
of media speculation
about the value of the perpetrators – in the
paintings. The Dutch hardcore criminal world
media stick to 50 to 100
or in the art world”
million euros, in
accordance the Art Loss
Register’s estimate in London. In the United States, the amount is
inflated from 100 million euros in The New York Times and on
Bloomberg News, to “hundreds of millions of euros” according to The
Huffington Post. In Britain the value yoyos between 60 million (Daily
Telegraph) and 310 million euros (Independent).
The actual value is somewhat lower. The morning after the robbery,
Willem van Hassel, chairman of the Kunsthal board, arrives at a quarter
to ten at the Rotterdam police headquarters to report the theft.
Although he notes that it is “quite possible” that the market value is
many times higher, he gives them a list with a total insurance value of
18.1 million euros.
The police have other worries. Two weeks after the robbery, TGO Art
isn’t a single step closer to solving the case. “We don’t even know where
to look for the perpetrators – in the hardcore criminal world or in the
art world,” a police spokesperson says.
They pin hope on the security images taken in the weeks preceding the
art theft. The perpetrators must have looked around beforehand. For
weeks on end, the detectives analyze the hours of security footage from
the Kunsthal in search of suspicious behaviour, patterns or other
indications.
Carcaliu tour2
The middleman
he inhabitants of Măcin, Eugen and Alexandru’s birthplace,

T form an isolated community. The closest big city, Brăila, isn’t
far away, around 20 kilometres as the crow flies, but the
Danube separates them and there is no bridge. A return fare on
the ferry costs around ten euros, too much for most of the inhabitants.
The average monthly wage in Romania is 340 euros, in Măcin, it is less
than 200.
Apart from this, Brăila doesn’t have much to offer. On paper it’s a big
city, in reality it’s the Detroit of south east Europe. Beautiful neo-
classical theatres, institutes and villas bear witness to better times when
the city was a prominent inland port. Now they are empty and
crumbling, the promenades are abandoned. Over the last decade, a third
of the population has left. Just as Romania lies on the fringes of Europe,
the area around Măcin is at the frayed edge of Romania.
On the other side of The houses in Brăila are

Măcin is Carcaliu, the
empty and crumbling.
village where Radu and
Adrian grew up. It is a Over the last decade, a
tiny settlement, originally third of the population
founded by Lipovans,
has left
Russians fleeing from
Peter the Great. There is
just one tarmacked road. The houses are a mishmash bunch: some are
so dilapidated you could call them hovels, others have been neatly done
up.
The young men have not been missed in Carcaliu and Măcin. They are
known as interlopi, Romanian for criminals. They all have extensive
criminal records for vandalism, violence, threats, arms possession and
theft.
There is only one person in the entire area of that generation whom
everybody is proud of – everyone knows that Petre C. has made
something of his life.
***
anoeing on the Danube, this was how Petre managed to get out of the
village according to its inhabitants. Already at a young age, he spent
much of his time taking
C part in canoeing
competitions in the
regional capital of
Tulcea. He won several youth
championships and took gold in
the world championship canoe
sprint in 2003, in Gainsville,
Georgia - 500 metres in a four-
man canoe. At other world
championships he has taken one
silver and two bronze medals.
But Petre is not quite good enough. In Carcaliu he might be celebrated,

but the sporting world looks down on him somewhat. Contrary to the
other three athletes in his canoe, he has never made it to the Olympic
Games. In 2005, he gave up canoeing and worked as a builder in the
States for a while. After that, he returned to Romania where he made a
striking career change. He became a male model and PA to the eccentric
millionaire, Catalin Botezatu, famous in Romania for his role as a jury
member in the television programme Romania’s Next Top Model.
Petre, with whom he grew up in Carcaliu, is one of the first people Radu
calls upon his return. If there’s anyone who moves in cosmopolitan
circles and doesn’t have a problem with stolen goods, it’s the former
canoeing champion.
***
n Friday 2nd November, two weeks after the theft, Radu and
O Eugen drive to Bucharest together, a journey of more than

three hours. They meet Petre around 15:00 in his first-floor
apartment overlooking one of the biggest parks in the capital. Radu and
Eugen sign in with the concierge.
Eugen holds his tongue He doesn’t have a

but Radu gets straight to
mnemonic for Gauguin
the point. He has two
paintings for sale. Who so he’s written the name
by? Petre asks. on a piece of paper
The Matisse is easy, Radu
remembers it like the car, the Daewoo Matiz. He doesn’t have a
mnemonic for Gauguin so he’s written the names on a piece of paper.
Petre still doesn’t recognize the names, Radu’s handwriting is illegible.
Petre asks more questions. How did they get the paintings? Are they
authentic? What will his cut be if he finds a buyer? No answers. All
Radu says is that they got the paintings in France and that they’ll pay
him for his work as a middleman.
***
othing happens for a couple of weeks then Petre calls. He’s
N found someone who might be interested: Constantin Dinescu,
an acquaintance of his boss. Like the extravagant millionaire
Botezatu, he spends his summers in Mamaia, a spit of land
seven kilometres long and 300 metres wide near Constanta. Mamaia
with its dozens of apartment buildings, discotheques and restaurants is
the Chersonissos of Romania where both partying youngsters and the
Romanian nouveau riche alight. Dinescu has made his money in real
estate but also deals in antiques and jewelry. He sometimes sells the odd
painting.
When Petre approaches him, Dinescu asks him to come over. He shows
him the piece of paper with the two names. Matisse and Gauguin. The
art dealer’s interest is piqued. He wants to arrange a valuation. What
about Saturday 17th November in the afternoon?
***
The valuation
adu sends Eugen with the two paintings in a plastic bag and
R Petre's telephone number in Bucharest. They meet at a

McDonalds. After that they go to Cartierul Sebastian, a run-
down area full of ramshackle houses and grey apartment
blocks from dictator Ceausescu’s time. The valuation will take place
there in an empty single-roomed apartment belonging to Dinescu.
Dinescu has brought in an old acquaintance for the estimate: Mariana

Dragu. She works as curator of European art at the Muzeul National de
Arte al Romanei, Romania’s leading art museum. The 59 year-old art
historian is a member of Codart, the international network of specialists
in Dutch and Flemish masters. She supplements her income by valuing
art on the side. She has brought along a special lamp to examine the
works in ultraviolet light.
When she enters the apartment, the works are on the table. The first
thing she thinks is that they are fakes. It’s impossible that this kind of
foreign art would be available on the Romanian market. She looks at the
people present. Next to Dinescu is a strong young man with a
strawberry blond crew cut.. He is wearing a red tracksuit top, blue jeans
and spotless white trainers. His albino-like appearance stands in stark
contrast to the other man there: a well-groomed, handsome man in a
beautifully fitted suit. Petre she finds charming.
Mariana Dragu
doesn’t recognize
the works as the
stolen paintings
from the Kunsthal.
She had heard
there had been a
robbery there but
didn’t go to the
trouble of finding
out the details.
When she turns
over the paintings
she begins to doubt
her first instinct.
She sees a sticker
from Hasenkamp, a
Photo Marianna Dragu
well-known
company
specializing in art transport.
Dragu takes the works to the apartment’s bathroom which she uses as a
dark room. She studies the paint, the pigments and the signatures.
Everything is as it should be. These paintings are genuine, she says as
she comes out of the bathroom.
She asks the men what they know about their origin. The works come
from England, they say. Dragu asks whether they mean that they were
stolen there. A long silence follows. “These paintings are really valuable.
Worth a lot of money,” Eugen, the man with the red tracksuit top, says,
he saw it online.
The word “stolen” is not mentioned again but everyone in the room
knows what is going on. Dragu tells them that the paintings are not
worth a thing at the moment, not a lei. The best thing they can do is go
to the police and hand in the paintings. Eugen gets up and starts to pack
away the paintings. “Forget it. The Russians will have them,” he says.
Before they leave, Mariana Dragu manages to take a photo of the back of
the Matisse.
***
t home, Dragu googles the paintings. She finds them straight
A away in an article about the Kunsthal robbery. She feels weak

at the knees. When she sees the security footage on YouTube,
she realizes that the works she examined earlier that day had
been hanging in a museum less than a month previously. She reads in
the coverage of the theft that Albanian and Irish gangs are suspected of
being involved. She becomes frightened.
She sends a text message to a friend who works at DIICOT, the

Romanian investigation department which deals with organized crime.
“I saw something I might wish I hadn’t. Help.”
On Monday she’s in his office. Mariana Dragu is the person who gets the
ball rolling. In the months that follow, sometimes she wakes up with a
jolt in the night. She could have saved the paintings. If only she’d said
she knew a buyer, that they should leave the paintings with her and
she’d see they got their money.
This is the only thing Dinescu will say about the case, “If only I’d saved
them.” He denies knowing that the paintings were stolen, yet he’s the
first person the Romanian investigation team look into.
***
The undercover operation

he Dutch police been close twice without knowing it. On 4th
T November, three weeks after the theft, they’d raided Natasha’s

house in the middle of the night. This is the house where the
paintings were hidden after the robbery, but the police were
only there to investigate illegal prostitution. Adrian was present at the
time too. Less than two weeks later, on 16th November, the police take
down his details again. They approach him because he’s standing on the
street with his laptop, downloading films via an unprotected wifi signal.
Now it is January 2013. The winter has well and truly begun in Carcaliu.
The temperature no longer rises above freezing and the village is
covered in mist on an almost daily basis. Radu, Eugen and Alexandru
have all returned to Romania with their girlfriends. Only Adrian has
remained in the Netherlands.
It is two and a half months since the robbery was committed and Radu
slowly begins to realize that the paintings – despite being worth millions
– might not be so easy to sell. He has heard nothing more from Petre
and an extensive trawl through Belgium hasn’t given any leads. On
Facebook he expresses his worry to Eugen that they might be lumbered
with the paintings forever.
At that moment, the paintings are stored in the house of Radu’s aunt,
Marfa Marcu. Immediately after his return to Carcaliu, Radu knocked
on the door of the house on the only tarmacked road in the village.
Would she look after some stuff for him? His aunt hadn’t asked what
was in the black suitcase and had no objections. “Just put it next to the
clothes rail,” she’d said.
During those weeks, the young men cautiously ask more and more
friends and acquaintances whether they know anyone who might be
interested. Alexandru’s mother works for a large wine importer in
Măcin, a company with many foreign contacts. Might her boss, Serghei
Cozma be interested? Through the grapevine they let it be known that
they have a Picasso and a Matisse to sell. Insurance value of the two
pieces: 8.3 million euros. Asking price: 50,000 euros.
Serghei Cozma says that he is not interested.
***
he Romanian police have been on the trail of the art thieves for
T one and a half months, thanks to the valuer’s tip-off. Early
January there’s something of a breakthrough: the suspects
identities become known. They have been traced through
telephone records. Art dealer Dinescu turned out to have had a lot of
contact with Petre in the days leading up to the evaluation. His phone
records give them Radu and Eugen’s numbers.
There was mainly a lot of contact on 2nd November, the day that Radu
and Eugen first visited Petre in his apartment in Bucharest. The
detectives get their names from the reception of the apartment building
where Radu and Eugen had to sign in. Footage from security cameras in
the block gives them their faces too.
The images are sent to the Netherlands. The two young men show up on
the Kunsthal’s security footage under analysis from the weeks leading
up to the theft. Things move fast from then on. The investigating team
gets permission to tap the suspects’ telephones and Facebook is asked to
preserve and provide any data.
When Radu and Alexandru discuss possible buyers over the phone, the
police listen in. They also listen in on their failed attempt to persuade
Serghei Cozma, Măcin’s wine importer, to buy the paintings. When the
investigators approach him, Cozma agrees to work with them.
***
adu, Eugen and Alexandru get more and more nervous. They
R can’t even sell the paintings at a bargain basement price. What
if they get stuck with the loot? They become extremely careful
in their communications, never mentioning the paintings
directly.
They are suspicious when Serghei Cozma suddenly tells them he is

interested in the paintings after all. He wants to make an appointment
to look over the paintings with an art expect before buying them.
They agree nevertheless: Sunday 20th January is when the meeting will
take place.
***
he art expert is a Romanian undercover cop. He’s been given a
T crash course in art research the week before the operation so
that he’ll be somewhat credible. The plan is to arrest the men
as soon as the Matisse and the Picasso are on the table. They
hope to get hold of the rest of the canvasses later, at least they’ll have
something.
***
his is when things go wrong. That Saturday afternoon, the day
T before the undercover op, Radu gets a phone call from Petre.
He’s heard – probably from the concierge at the apartment
complex – that the police are investigating him. He is afraid
their conversations are being tapped.
The Romanian police are indeed listening along and hear Radu panic.
“What should we do?” he asks Petre. “Should we burn them?”
The agents know that their undercover operation has failed and that
there’s a serious chance the works will be destroyed. A few hours later,
Radu, Eugen and Alexandru are arrested. Without the paintings.
***
The destruction
ow can she protect her son? Directly after Radu’s arrest, the
H police turned her house upside down. They didn’t find
anything, but it would only be a matter of time before the
paintings are found in her sister’s house, in the bedroom
where they’ve been stored for the past couple of months.
Olga was on her own. Her husband was doing time for assault and now
she’d lost her son Radu too. The only person she could talk to at the
time was Natasha, Radu’s girlfriend, who’d also returned from the
Netherlands by then.
Olga tells Natasha that the stolen paintings are at her sister’s house and
that she’s afraid the police will find them. Two days after the arrest, on
the day that the breakthrough in the case becomes major news in
Romania and the Netherlands, they drive in Olga’s Land Rover to her
sister, Marfa Marcu’s house on the only tarmacked road in Carcaliu. Her
sister notices her nervous Olga is. She gives her the black trolley suitcase
with the brand name Hawar.
Radu’s mother and girlfriend bury the suitcase – his name still on it – in
the garden of the derelict house opposite Natasha’s childhood home, in
one of the narrowest, most downtrodden streets in Carcaliu.
***
he day after Olga and Natasha bury the paintings, Olga begins
T to have her doubts. Is it a safe place? What’s more, Natasha
tells her she’ll be returning to the Netherlands that week, so if
she wants to move the paintings again with her, she’ll have to
be quick.
On the evening of 24th January 2013, five days after the arrests, Olga
and Natasha set off again around 21:00. There’s a full moon but enough
mist to conceal their actions. They dig up the case in the garden of the
derelict house and take out the paintings. The suitcase goes back into
the ground and they wrap the paintings in plastic in Olga’s house. It will
protect them from moisture. Three paintings in one package, four in the
other.
Afterwards they go to the small graveyard opposite Olga’s house. After a

few mild days the weather has turned cold, the temperature hovers
around freezing. They open the old wooden gate and walk to the back
part of the graveyard. Here they bury the paintings again.
The small graveyard near Olga’s house where she

buried the paintings a second time.
Photo Daniel Mihailescu / AFP
he police stay on the case over the weeks that follow. More than
T a hundred house searches are conducted in the village. Olga’s
sister’s house is completely ransacked. “Why?” Marfa Marcu
sobs to a local journalist who has come to take a look. “What
did they think they’d find here? There isn’t anything. No paintings, no
pictures. I don’t hide that kind of thing.” Olga’s house is searched again
too. She grows even more afraid.
17th February 2013, four months after the Kunsthal robbery. Olga has
no one to talk to but she’s made a decision.
***
lga stands in front of the heating stove in the bathroom. A short while
ago she lit the fire then stepped out into the biting cold,
making her way to the small graveyard opposite her house
O where, in the dead of night, she dug up the artworks and
brought them back inside.
Picasso, Gauguin, Matisse, Monet, Meijer de Haan and Freud. On

television they are talking about a loot worth hundreds of millions of
euros. The amount is not important to her. The pictures are evidence
against her son and destroying the evidence seems like the only way she
can help him.
The artworks go up like tindersticks.
Is this what happened?

Illustration Aloys Oosterwijk
***
“The next day I cleaned the stove. I took out the ash and put it
in a wheelbarrow. My gardener Gioni emptied the
wheelbarrow at the dump.
I wasn’t going to tell anybody what I’d done, but later I

realized I’d made a big mistake. Radu told me that he was
hoping to get a reduced sentence by giving the artworks back. I
told him that I had already burned them.
Radu tried to protect me. He told the authorities that he’d told
me to give the pictures to someone I didn’t know. I said this in
my statement later, too afraid to admit that I’d destroyed the
pictures.
However, I realize now that Radu is taking responsibility for

things I did. I’m very sorry for my actions and the fact I didn’t
help the investigation from the start. If I could get the pictures
back I would.”
***
The court case
0th August 2013. They have just been led into the courtroom in
1 Bucharest, handcuffed together. Eugen and Alexandru stare
ahead. Olga is emotional and gets a hug from her lawyer. Radu
talks extensively to his lawyer, waving his arms a lot. When the
judge orders everyone to stand, he turns to his mother for a moment,
two benches behind him and gives her an encouraging nod. Olga has
been detained for five months at this point, she was arrested on 8th
March.
Petre is notably absent. He was arrested ten days after Radu, Eugen and
Alexandru but has been released pending trial. To the judge’s anger he
has decided not to attend today. He has opted for canoe training
instead, having taken up his old sport again.
Adrian, who committed the burglary together with Radu is still on the
run.
Natasha, Radu’s girlfriend, was arrested in the Netherlands in March

and will have to answer to a Dutch judge later.
Catalin Dancu, lawyer of Radu and his mother Olga,

talks to the media after the first hearing in the trial in
Bucharest August 13, 2013.
Photo Bogdan Cristel / REUTERS
t is busy in the small courtroom. Before the start of the trial of the
Kunsthal suspects, a dozen journalists flew in from the
Netherlands. The case is being handled in Romania, in March
I the Netherlands decided not to request extradition.
The international new agencies and dozens of Romanian

journalists are also attending the court case. In their live reports on the
steps of the court building, reporters are still talking about paintings
worth hundreds of millions of euros, even though it has long been clear
that the insurance value is 18.1 million euros. In early February, an
insurance syndicate at Lloyd’s in London paid out this amount to the
Triton Foundation.
There is much speculation in the media as to whether the paintings were

really burned or not. The thing is, before the start of the court case, Olga
withdrew her statement. She did not burn the paintings but made the
statement under pressure from the Romanian police, she says.
The suggestion that the artworks weren’t burned is being propagated by

the two star lawyers appointed to the defense, Catalin Dancu and Maria
Vasii. They have both handled several high-profile cases in the past and
Dancu in particular is a welcome guest on tv talk shows. They have
taken on the case for free; some cases pay for themselves.
***
he Romanian detectives managed to recover some of the ashes
T from Olga’s stove and the rubbish dump. In early March, the
remains were put in three large old water bottles and given to
experts from the Romanian National History Museum for
investigation. In July, analysis of paint residue, canvas remains and

tacks found in the ashes showed that at least three to four canvasses had
been burned in Olga’s stove.
This doesn’t mean that the other paintings are likely to turn up. The
scientists cannot prove it but assume that these artworks were
destroyed too. The three other works (the Picasso and the Monets) were
produced on board and paper, which wouldn’t leave any traces if
burned. In any case, it is probable that the Monets were irreparably
damaged early on because of the fragile nature of pastel drawings.
Pastels have to be transported flat otherwise the chalk rubs off the
paper.
However, the researchers will never be able to say with one hundred
percent certainty that in the night of 17th February, the seven stolen
artworks from the Kunsthal were burned in Olga’s stove.
The lawyers are trying to make use of this doubt. One of the things the
suspects are charged with is “theft with major consequences”. If the
judge thinks that the paintings weren’t destroyed, there can be no
question of “major consequences”.
The suspects stand to get prison sentences of between seven and twenty
years. The case is expected to run for a few more months.
With thanks to:

Pieter van Os
Daan van Lent
Carmen Constantin
Anouk van Kampen
Peter Zantingh
Wieland van Dijk
NRC Nieuwe Media Team
Christian ten Hoope
Appie Verschoor
Sandra Smallenburg
Ward Wijndelts
Sasja van Diggelen / Fotodienst
NRC
Bogdan Tomasevici / Antena 3
AVRO Kunstuur
RTV Rijnmond
Accountability
This reconstruction is based in part on the Dutch
and Romanian police files. Jan Moerer’s story is
based on an extensive statement he made to the
police. Kunsthal director Emily Ansenk spoke to
the NRC Handelsblad shortly after the robbery, at
the time she heard the news. This is the only
statement the Kunsthal has made. Security
company Trigion refuses to discuss specific
clients; the two guards’ stories are based on
statements in the police file. Petre C. and
Natasha T. who are both free at present refuse to
speak to the press and the Dutch Public

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25/07/2022, 12:42 The art of stealing - nrc.

The heating stove in Olga’s bathroom. She burned

Olga is on her own. Her son is in prison, being held on

There, in Carcaliu, a remote village at the poor south-

Picasso, Gauguin, Matisse, Monet, Meijer de Haan and

The artworks go up like tindersticks.

Early in the morning of 16th October 2012, seven valuable

J ringing, then his landline. It is 04:28 in the morning. The

An alarm has gone off. Paintings

Half an hour later, Moerer is

Then they turn the corner. Seven empty spaces.

A white spot marks where one of the stolen pieces

he Kunsthal, literally meaning ‘art hall’, on the periphery of the

At the Kunsthal there are no security guards at night – cameras and

The Kunsthal is a At the Kunsthal there are

A he asks the two security guards to call the police. At 05:02,

Just over ten minutes

criminals forced the

Photo Robin Utrecht / ANP

T Radu, who at 28, is the oldest of a small Romanian criminal

Now it is time to up their game, Radu thinks. Art is worth a lot of

Radu grew up in Carcaliu, a small village in poverty-stricken south-east

Eugen and Alexandru are friends of Radu’s.

Alexandru, a tall muscular man of 23 is the first to leave for the

Ștefania gets her customers through the

Over the months that follow, Radu and Eugen

“I can’t tell you

Photo Robin Utrecht / ANP

t 07:18, a reporter from RTV Rijmond is the first to

Everyone assumes that it was a well-planned burglary.

“Avant-gardes, the Triton Foundation’s collection”.

The posters promise a

The decision is taken. They will attempt to rob the Kunsthal.

The Kunsthal (bottom left) from above.

Security footage from the Kunsthal

O surroundings. Radu goes jogging around the Museum Park a

On Thursday 11th Once they’ve forced the

The choice has been made of seven moderately-sized paintings. They

Eugen desperately needs cash, it is important that the burglary be a

The evening of the robbery, Eugen drives to Alexandru’s house. He

T of emergency, the door always has to be able to be opened from

What exactly went wrong Two minutes and 48

And Radu has enough experience of mechanical locks. This is how he

Radu and Adrian enter the museum at 03.16.51 hours, 72 minutes

T leaving Alexandru alone in the kebab shop.They agree to meet

T later in Istanbul where Kunsthal director Emily Ansenk is on

T world in terms of size. Willem Cordia, who died in 2011 at the

he is on the phone even as director Ansenk packs her bags. At a

Kunsthal director Emily Ansenk and chairman of the

A paintings have been stolen. At 17:00, three hours after landing

“What happened is a nightmare for any museum director.

“All of the works are described and registered

Radu and Natasha’s house above hairdressing salon

Stolen art is registered in an international database, the Art Loss

The idea that rich art

R haven’t slept when

pumps they decide that it might not be that sensible to return to

Radu and Eugen return to Rotterdam by train. It’s time to sleep.

“Good afternoon, this is the

“Yes, the Dutch football team

urning on the television more than 24 hours after the art

Andreea doesn’t understand what’s going on. Her boyfriend Eugen

On Thursday evening, Radu and Eugen put the