No Ransom for Paintings, France Says

Culture Minister Jack Lang said Monday that France will not yield to any ransom demand to recover nine uninsured Impressionist paintings worth more than $12.5 million that were stolen by gunmen from a Paris museum.

“There will be no question of acceding to any sort of extortion,” said Lang. “I know the French police are active and remarkably organized to do the impossible to find the (culprits) and, above all, the artwork.”

Police combed the scene of the theft, the Marmottan Museum, and took testimony from guards and visitors who were forced to lie on the floor Sunday while at least five thieves stole the nine paintings, including Claude Monet’s priceless “Sunrise, an Impression,” a title that inspired the name for the late 19th-Century Impressionist movement.

The Academie des Beaux Arts, which oversees the Marmottan Museum, said none of the nine paintings, including four other Monets and two by Pierre Auguste Renoir, were insured. No paintings in French museums are insured until they are loaned out to other museums, the Academie said.

Most Thefts for Extortion

Jean-Claude Vincent, head of the special police unit charged with stolen art objects, said most museum thefts are plotted with the goal of reselling the stolen work or getting insurance money through extortion.

Speculation about how the thieves would cash in on the daring robbery centered on extortion, resale or a theft commissioned by a wealthy collector.

“Art thieves only rarely work for collectors,” Vincent said on French television. “Most often, they extort for the insurance money, a method which always has failed (in France), or try to resell the works after a period of ‘laundering’ which can be very long.”

Police have established that the thieves were between 30 and 40 years old, of medium height and without any particular distinguishing features. Each was armed with a pistol.

According to witnesses, the gunmen entered the museum, in Paris’ elegant 16th district, with guns drawn. One pointed a pistol at the head of the chief guard and ordered all guards and visitors to lie on the floor.

Two or three gunmen immediately went to the basement Monet room, while at least one other collected paintings in various other rooms. They broke a case to get at two portraits of Monet, artistically of lesser value than the other pictures. They then fled with the painting in a car double-parked outside.