A known art thief, he was asked to steal the painting and sell it for sixty million dollars.

The police initially assumed an expert art thief to be behind the heist.

He said the gang worked in the same way as art thieves, taking orders from unscrupulous merchants who sold the bounty to connoisseurs.

Here, however, we come to the art thief's buyer of last resort: the insurance company.

Others had been submerged by reservoirs or looted by art thieves.