Italian police said on May 9 that they had recovered three paintings worth over $10 million that were stolen months earlier from a museum near the northern city of Parma.
Parma Police Chief Andrea Pagliaro told AFP that nine Moldovan nationals are under investigation in connection with the theft, five of whom are believed to have directly carried out the break-in.
According to a statement from the Carabinieri police and Italy's cultural heritage protection unit, the paintings by Paul Cezanne, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Henri Matisse were found in an apartment in Parma. The works were taken from the Fondazione Magnani Rocca museum in late March during an operation that lasted less than three minutes.
The paintings are all over a century old. Police suspect an organized gang was behind the theft.
Video of the burglary, released by police on May 9, shows two masked thieves entering the museum through a window, removing the paintings from the walls, and handing them to an accomplice waiting outside. The alarm system was triggered during the incident.
In a separate development, Brazilian authorities said on the evening of May 8 that they had recovered works by one of the same artists, Henri Matisse. The paintings, estimated to be worth around $200,000, were returned to the library from which they were stolen in December. They were found in a residential complex in São Bernardo do Campo, where a man was arrested.
