Add a German man to the three Romanians in custody over the theft from a Rotterdam Museum:
The 46-year-old German is suspected of blackmail for allegedly offering to broker the return of the paintings to the Triton Foundation, a collection of avant-garde art.
The seven paintings, which also included a Matisse and a Gauguin, were grabbed in the early hours of Oct. 16 in a lightning theft from the Kunsthal gallery in Rotterdam where they were on display. The paintings, worth tens of millions of dollars, have not been recovered.
Cologne’s head prosecutor Ulrich Bremer, told The Associated Press that the man was arrested on a warrant from his office on Wednesday near the city of Freiburg in southwestern Germany. He would not release the man’s name.
Dutch Art Heist Arrest (AP/Huffington Post)