Agents from Interpol launched an international investigation on Friday after one of four works of art stolen during an audacious, multimillion dollar raid on a museum in Rio was put up for sale on a Russian Web site.
Federal police said Henri Matisse's Luxembourg Gardens had been placed on the auction site Mastak for around four hours and that they suspected collaboration between foreign buyers and drug traffickers.
Reports in the Brazilian press suggested that a French man, who used to live in a beachside apartment in upmarket Ipanema, may have been the brains behind the robbery.
Samba camouflage
The paintings, valued at around US$50 million, were snatched on the first day of Carnival from the Chacara do Ceu museum in the Santa Teresa district. Armed thieves stormed the museum during a samba procession before supposedly making their escape through the crowds.
Also among the stolen paintings were Claude Monet's Marine; Picasso's The Dance and Salvador Dali's Two Balconies.
As a reconstruction of the crime entered its second day yesterday, police said that burnt fragments of three of the frames had been found in a favela (shanty town) close to the museum.
The fragments were located near a bar in the Morro dos Prazeres, a hilltop shanty town well known for the elaborate graffiti that adorns its entrance.
Isabelle Vasconcellos, the police chief heading the investigation, said they suspected that drug traffickers were trying to sell the paintings, which she believes are still in Rio de Janeiro.
She said: "We have a videotape of the procession but we haven't been able to identify them [the thieves] from it."
During a visit to the museum on Thursday one politician called for a parliamentary investigation into the trafficking of Brazil's cultural heritage.
"This is trafficking; this is organized crime," state deputy Alice Portugal told reporters.
Web crime haven
Since the 1990s Brazil has gained a reputation for online crime. In 2004 a federal police report said the country was home to 80 percent of the world's hackers, while community groups such as the Google-run Orkut are, police say, frequently used to hawk drugs and stolen goods.
Marcelo Marques, of the Sao Paulo organization HackerTeen which trains young people in Internet security, says many Brazilian criminals now view the Internet as a "land without law."
"Lots of people describe Brazil as a paradise for online evil-doers," he said.
As details of the theft emerged this week bewildered revellers, who may have unwittingly given cover to the fleeing criminals, were left scratching their heads.
"I thought it was strange that the federal police were there," said Rafael Kalil, 25.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese