Word: lootings
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...April 14, 1991, armed robbers raided Amsterdam's state-run Van Gogh Museum at night, cut the alarm system and spent 45 minutes picking out 20 works by the Dutch Impressionist. Thanks to a flat tire on the getaway car, the heist was short lived. Among the loot recovered 35 minutes later: The Potato Eaters, which had also been stolen in 1988, from another Dutch museum. Total worth of the take: about $500 million -- assuming that such famous hot potatoes could have been resold...
Together with the U.S. Customs Service, Josephson's agency has helped stem the smuggling of archaeological loot from one region: Latin America. Plunderers of pre-Columbian sites used to have a field day rifling covertly excavated Mayan, Olmec and Incan ruins and shipping the artifacts north to a voracious U.S. market. In 1970 the UNESCO convention on cultural property established an international framework to curb pillage and the illicit trade in artifacts. Among the rich countries that are the biggest markets for stolen works, however, only the U.S. and Canada signed the treaty. Britain, France, & Germany, Switzerland, the Low Countries...
...much as $176 billion. Two official inquiries are under way -- one by the Russian parliament, which is probing party involvement in the Aug. 19 putsch, and another by Russia's prosecutor general, Valentin Stepankov. So far, little light has been shed on the whereabouts of the vanished loot. But the source appears indisputable: the Soviet treasury. "The party did not see any difference between its budget and that of the state," says Nikolai Fedorov, justice minister of the Russian Federation. "Tens of millions of dollars have been siphoned...
Today's pretty women represent a new breed: mannequins with sex appeal, as glamorous as cinema legends, as visible as the designers whose clothes they parade. They earn spectacular loot from their spectacular looks. Because, more than ever, modeling is about money. At a time when spending is down, top mannequins can still make consumers buy, so they are paid millions. The worldwide recession and tough times in the advertising business have made the top models one of the few reliable sales tools...
...knew nothing of rampant fraud at B.C.C.I. until shortly before July 5, when regulators closed the $20 billion rogue bank in most of the 69 countries where it operated. In Peru the scandal breathed new life into charges that former President Alan Garcia Perez had used B.C.C.I. accounts to loot as much as $50 million from the country's treasury...