Civil guard recovers stolen canvas and averts diplomatic incident

Six men and a woman were waiting for Javi. Waiting in silence, huddled around a table in a cafeteria in Barcelona. "Man, what are you all doing here?" he says on seeing them. Javi expected to find only Tektas, the head of the gang of thieves. He had promised to show them the three million euros they wanted for a painting: La Maison Rose, by the French impressionist Henri-Edmond Cross. Tektas and the others had robbed it at gunpoint from a Belgian museum. At the meeting, they had no suspicion Javi was in fact a civil guard about to arrest them.

It happened on April 23, 2002, but the case came to trial two weeks ago in Barcelona. The prosecution and the defense agreed on a year in jail for two intermediaries, Luis and Haiko. The others are serving time in Belgium. Javi, in fact, is the Civil Guard sergeant Charly, and remembers well the story of how he recovered a painting valued at 500,000 euros.

It began with a call from an informer, who had been offered a canvas for three million. The civil guard investigated, soon finding the museum where it was on display. The director of the Musée du Cinquantenaire was reassuring. "Just this morning as I came in, I stood there admiring it a while," she said. Case closed, they thought. But an hour later, Charly got another call. It was his colonel.

"What have you done? The director general of the police has just called me, and he got a call from the Belgian ambassador! They say that a picture was robbed at gunpoint this morning, and that the Civil Guard knew they were going to take it!"

What have you done? The police chief just got a call from the Belgian ambassador"

Now it was a matter of state. Charly called his confidant and organized a meeting with the sellers to recover the painting. He would be Javi, representative of a wealthy Russian, who demanded no certificate of provenance, and would be driving an Audi (confiscated from a drug dealer). At three meetings in bars in Tarragona, he played his role in front of Luis, a 46-year-old who looked like someone "who robs gas stations;" Haiko, a "tall, cold" Belgian; and Marc, another Belgian. They did not have the picture, but knew the thieves.

A week of negotiations later, the art thieves arrived by bus at Barcelona Nord station: three men of Turkish origin, and a woman pushing a baby carriage. They supposedly brought with them the picture for sale.

The next day Haiko took Javi to a farmhouse in the hills. The escort lost them. Javi was alone in this house in the countryside with three "very mean-looking" Turks. Tektas, the head, shouted he wanted the money. Javi feared the worst, but at least saw they had the painting: La Maison Rose, 38 by 46 centimeters, had traveled in a plastic bag, in a baby carriage.

They agreed to meet the next day, in a café. Javi would then show the money to Tektas. But they all showed up: Luis, Haiko, Marc and the four Turks. "Nobody trusted anybody anymore." Even so, the undercover cop convinced them they could not all crowd into the bank, where the prepared bank manager received him obsequiously. On the security camera, he showed Tektas an attaché case with three million euros inside. All that remained was for an art expert (another civil guard) to determine the picture's authenticity the next day, and the money would be his, he said.

This time, the appointment was at a swanky hotel. A camouflaged Civil Guard van waited in the parking lot, in front of Tektas' car. Javi got into his Audi. Tektas put La Maison Rose in the trunk of his car. He thought they were going to the bank for the money. But at that moment the police burst out of the van. The others were arrested in the street.

The museum director came to Spain to pick up La Maison Rose. "We took her out for a paella," smiles the sergeant. She gave him a lithograph of the picture, which hangs proudly in his office. He also won a silver medal for his fine performance.