Epress.am News from Armenia
A Van Gogh painting valued by some experts at $50 million was stolen from a Cairo museum on Saturday, Egypt’s minister of culture announced, reports The New York Times.
Egyptian law enforcement officials blamed lax security at the Mohamed Mahmoud Khalil Museum for the incident, saying that none of its alarms and only a few of its surveillance cameras were working when the painting known as “Poppy Flowers” and “Vase and Flowers” (a depiction of a vase filled with yellow poppies, was sliced from its frame and taken).
Culture Minister Farouk Hosni announced shortly after the disappearance of the painting was made public that it had been recovered at the Cairo airport and that two Italians had been arrested in connection with theft.
But Mr. Hosni said later that he had been given bad information and that the search continued. Egypt’s top prosecutor, Abdel Meguid Mahmoud, told the BBC that the museum’s security system was nothing more than a “facade.”
He said museum officials had been looking for spare parts to mend the system but “hadn’t managed to find them.”