Word: thefts
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...B.C.C.I.'s $20 billion or more in assets last year, less than $2 billion is recoverable, the bank's liquidators say. Most of that money disappeared in outright theft, uncollectible loans, bribes and losses on trading. The bank's collapse has meant disaster for more than 1 million depositors...
Fruit vendors sell ripe pears and grapes to grateful Moscovites out of the back of trucks and cars. Suddenly, police officers appear from the Office of the Division for the Struggle Against the Theft of Socialist Property (OBKhSS). The vendors are arrested for selling state property. Their goods are confiscated...
...Trace's estimate is accurate, the take from museum burglaries, gallery heists, housebreaks and the looting of archaeology sites would rank as the world's third most profitable criminal enterprise, behind drugs and computer theft. More and more, art is becoming a prey of organized crime. Italy's single most valuable missing artwork is a Baroque masterpiece, Caravaggio's 1609 Nativity, which was stolen in 1969 from the Oratory of San Lorenzo in Palermo, Sicily. Investigators in Britain are now convinced that the painting, worth about $50 million today, has been used by the Mafia as security for drug deals...
...were only a simple case of crooks vs. cops, art theft might be easier to control. But complicity is rife within the art world. Richard Volpe, who was an ace art detective with the New York City police for 25 years, contends that "the least guilty of all parties are the thieves." These "mules," he insists, "couldn't do it without the cooperation of gallery owners, flea- market purveyors, auction houses, museums, insurers, security companies, collectors and finally law-enforcement agencies. Everyone else either knowingly or through neglect gives the thief...
...world's treasures are falling victim to a boom in art theft...