In Egypt, employees of the museum from which Van Gogh’s "Flower Vase" was stolen were convicted

This week, an Egyptian court decided to detain five officials who had previously constituted the board of the state department of fine arts, because of the connivance that led to the theft of Van Gogh’s canvas estimated at 55 million dollars, local Egyptian publications say.

Vincent van Gogh’s painting Poppies (Vase with Flowers, Vase with Viscaria)

A “flower vase” was stolen from the Cairo Museum of Mahmoud Khalil in August 2010. Recall that in this museum is the best collection of art objects of the nineteenth or twentieth centuries in the entire Middle East. The museum’s collection consists of works collected by Mohammed Mahmoud Khalil, a politician who died in 1953. The collection includes paintings by Gauguin, Monet, Manet and Renoir, as well as Danish post-impressionist Vincent Van Gogh.

The Egyptian state news agency MENA and the court’s press service said five employees were found guilty of “causing the theft of the painting,” without explaining the details. In this case, the canvas could not be returned.

Shortly after the theft, the police wanted to find that the security measures in the museum were extremely weak and cast doubt on the safety of the treasury of masterpieces that were on public display in Egypt.

Official sources report that the court issued a verdict to Mohsen Shaalan, who was the head of the department of fine arts at the Egyptian Ministry of Culture, prescribing a year in prison and community service. Four other museum staff were sentenced to six months in prison.

Egyptian billionaire Naguib Sawiris (Naguib Sawiris) offered a reward of one million Egyptian pounds (about $ 168,000) for information that would help return the picture.

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