Austrian authorities detained six dealers while trying to sell fake Picasso paintings 
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VEIN. Pretending to be potential buyers, Austrian law enforcement authorities arrested a group of dealers selling fake paintings by Pablo Picasso back in July 2016, but details of this operation have been released just now.
The information that the criminal group, consisting of citizens of Austria and Slovenia, is selling fakes, the Austrian authorities received at the beginning of the year. The fraudsters chose a hotel room at the Vienna Airport as the main base. During the arrest, they tried to sell five fakes to the police at a price of about 10 million euros each. In total, a catalog of paintings for sale, which turned out to be in the hands of the police, announced work worth 72 million euros.
During the detention of five Austrian citizens, another 14 fakes of paintings by Picasso and Emil Nolde were found. The Slovenian authorities who detained the sixth member of the group announced that they found 66 fakes of 40 artists in his apartment, including Gustav Klimt, Claude Monet and Vasily Kandinsky. A Slovenian citizen tried to sell some of these fakes in 2014, but did not find buyers.
All the detainees claim that in their opinion the paintings were real, and they had no intention of deceiving customers. All the paintings are signed, on their back are stamps of reputable galleries. A certificate of authenticity and a history of its origin are issued for each painting.
Information about who is the real author of all these paintings, how many and what fakes have already been sold, as well as who is still involved in the fraudulent scheme, is currently not available. The detainees were released before the trial, and all the seized paintings are under examination.
Anna Sidorova © Gallerix.ru
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