Dutch art heist possibly linked to Belgian cocaine bust

Last week’s theft of paintings by, among others, Picasso and Monet from a Dutch museum could be linked to the earlier seizure of eight tons of cocaine in Belgium, a security expert claimed yesterday. The October 16 theft from Rotterdam’s Kunsthal museum, which saw thieves disappear into the night with seven major European paintings, was the biggest crime of its kind in 20 years and is as yet unsolved, with Dutch police repeating appeals for witnesses. “A senior police officer called me with the theory that the theft was linked to drug trafficking,” Ton Cremers, a former head of security at Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum, told AFP. The paintings, worth between €50 million and €200 million according to different estimates, may have been taken to repay an underworld debt resulting from the massive cocaine seizure in Antwerp four days earlier. “In the twenty years I have been in this job I have observed very close links between art and drug trafficking,” he said. Cremers did not say what nationality the police source was, except that it was neither Dutch nor Belgian. The cocaine seized in Antwerp had a street value of €500 million, and was one of the biggest hauls ever made in Europe. Detectives followed the suspected traffickers across the border to Rotterdam where a Belgian lorry driver was arrested with four Dutch men. Dutch police last week released security camera footage of the heist, showing two thieves making off with two Monets, a Picasso, a Gauguin, a Matisse and a Freud as well as another painting in an operation lasting less than two minutes.