In the tangled web of organised crime, illicit art dealings can sometimes serve as both currency and collateral.  The ongoing trial of "Flor B.,"a Belgian national with a shocking criminal resume and a growing reputation as one of Europe's most dangerous narco-traffickers, has taken a dramatic turn into the world of cultural crime.  Dubbed the “Bongoking” in encrypted chat logs, this individual has been linked by prosecutors to the high-profile theft of Two Laughing Boys with a Mug of Beer, a 17th-century masterpiece by Dutch Golden Age painter Frans Hals, stolen on 26 August 2020 from the Hofje van Mevrouw van Aerden Museum in Leerdam, housed on the Kerkstraat.

The first lead on this case came in early 2021, when White Hat cyber-exploit hackers in the European police cracked SKY ECC's EncroChat encryption software, a chat service app that only ran on specially configured Nokia, Google, Apple and BlackBerry phones.  Listening in, the law enforcement officers struck intelligence gold.  By 2023, officers had intercepted some 115 million criminal conversations, by an estimated 60,000 users in which criminals openly negotiated, sometimes in extremely granular detail, money laundering, murders, counterfeiting, drugs, and firearms trafficking.  

In some of these messages and voice recordings, shared both in group chats and one-on-one conversations, members of this drug network coordinated cocaine shipments, talked about their connections with South America drug barons, bragged about violent exploits, and discussed the recent high-profile art theft.

Just two weeks after the museum theft in Leerdam, in messages from the police-cracked app which are now part of trial records, occurred between an individual going by the chat handle Bongoking (Flor B's alleged pseudonym) who discussed the recently filched 17th-century painting, bragging about negotiating a lower purchase price.  

In selected texts released to the public Bongoking writes:

“I recently bought a Frans Hals, 2 laughing boys,” 

“Paid dearly, brother… Asked for 750, settled for 550.” 

Authorities believe this figure represents €550,000, the price the speaker paid for the stolen painting.  He chillingly outlines the painting's purpose in the same chat: not as a collector’s trophy, but as a strategic asset—something to potentially barter for leniency in relation to his wife's role in the criminal's illegal affairs.

“It won’t work for me, brother. But I might still be able to keep my wife out of jail with it, you know,” he wrote, anticipating his own eventual downfall.

He also talked about his construction of a private airport in Equatorial Guinea, used to exploit a shipping loophole which allowed cocaine to flow more easily into the Benelux as part of the kingpin's rapidly expanding criminal enterprise. 

Already a fugitive from justice, the discerning kingpin was in hiding in Switzerland, where for 20 months, he is alleged to have run his international drug cartel from various luxury properties unchallenged.  To do so he used the names Artur Gitta or later Georgios Kandylidis.  His wife for her part became known first as Simone Jung and then as Alexandra Sapranova.  That is until shortly before midnight on 16 February 2022 when both their crime-filled lives caught up with them.   

Following an intensive manhunt, Flor B. and his wife were arrested at a luxury 22nd floor apartment in the exclusive Renaissance residence (Mobimo Tower) in the heart of Zürich West.  The couple's infant son was sleeping in his crib in the next room when law enforcement officers raided the highrise.

Taken into custody, Flor B will be held at the Pöschwies correctional facility for eight months before being extradited to Belgium where he is placed in solitary confinement at Poort van Beveren, a state of the art, high security penal institution while his case in Begium proceeds.  His wife is initially held at the Dielsdorf women's prison in special prison accommodation for offenders with small children.  She will remain there for eight months before being released, and subsequently also extradited to Belgium.  

Flor B's legal team, led by attorney Yehudi Moszkowicz, disputes the prosecution’s interpretation of the messages related to the stolen painting.  Moszkowicz insists his client denies authorship of the incriminating texts and criticises the one-sided nature of the evidence, pointing out the absence of full chat transcripts, as well as the identity of the recipient. “These chats do not show that the sender of the messages actually has access to the painting,” he argued, suggesting the possibility of exaggeration.

But this is far from Flor B’s only serious criminal allegation.  The breakthrough in the SKY ECC cryptophone app exposed this network's trafficking operations, which investigators say revealed the young man as a central figure in a massive European drug empire.  His purported alias Bongoking surfaced repeatedly in communications linked to the importation of more than 16 tons of cocaine, valued at €400 million.  The message also allegedly tie him to violent networks in South America and the Netherlands.  Among the most startling revelations is his alleged orchestration of a drug smuggling scheme using Kriva Rochem, an Antwerp-based water treatment firm that doubled as a front business for cocaine importation.

In closing, the alleged link between Flor B., and his potential connection to the Frans Hals painting is remarkably similar to the thefts of two Van Gogh paintings which ended up in the hands of Camorra-linked mafia boss Raffaele Imperiale.  Likewise last December Stefan Papić, a member of the drug cartel Tito and Dino and considered to be the right-hand man of Flor B was arrested on the basis of a warrant from Belgium.  Papić had opened an art gallery Puro Arte in Breda which is suspected of being used to launder the proceeds of crime.  All three illustrate transnational organised crime figures who are members of massive drug cartels and who dabbled in the world of artistic works with the motivation of using them to launder the proceeds of crime, or use them as collateral or leverage in negotiations, whether in backrooms, on smart phones, or ultimately, in courtrooms during plea deals.

Unfortunately as Flor B's trial continues, the Frans Hals painting remains missing and its fate remains uncertain.  What we do know is that its value is immense not only in monetary terms but as a documented example of how deeply organised crime can entrench itself in the cracks of legitimate society.  Whether hanging in museums or hidded in a drug lord's hideaway, the convergence of fine art and criminal finance continues to challenge the boundaries of law enforcement, and the integrity of the art world itself.

Vincent Van Gogh's 1882  painting Parish garden in Nuenen stolen from the Singer Laren Museum on 30 March 2020

Dutch Golden Age master Frans Hals' 1626 painting  Two Laughing Boys taken from the Hofje van Mevrouw van Aerden Museum in Leerdam on 26 August 2020.

Neither painting has been recovered.  

Menara was also convicted for possession of a firearm and a large amount of hard drugs and was described by the court as an "incorrigible, calculating criminal".  In making their case, prosecutors had noted Menara's DNA presence at both crime scenes, and one the basis that the modus operandi from both thefts, as well as others in the past. 

The fact that Menara was tripped up by his own DNA is either ironic or just plain stupid, given that in 2009 Dutch police tracked the thief and an accomplice through DNA traces left on a crowbar and bolt cutters, at the scene of a 2009 museum burglary at the Stadsmuseum IJsselstein in the Netherlands.  There, burglars stole six landscape paintings from the 17th and 19th centuries, including works by Jan van Goyen and Willem Roelofs.  In that case Menara was acquitted.  Despite the DNA traces, the judge cited that this evidence alone was insufficient because the tools could also have been touched elsewhere.

Perhaps emboldened by shaking the charges relating to the Stadsmuseum IJsselstein, three years later in 2012 Menara violently entered the Gouda museum using semtex explosives blasting through the museum's front door.   In less than five minutes, he made off with a gilded silver monstrance created in 1662 by Johannes Boogeart which had been on loan to the museum from the parish of St. Anthony of Padua, fleeing the scene on a motorbike.  Adding insult to injury, debris from the explosion pierced a painting by Ferdinand Bol and another work of art.

This time though, Menara's luck didn't hold.  A short while after, Dutch Police tied him to the blowing up an ATM with explosives, which helped them in obtaining a warrant to tap his phone, which gave the police the much-needed evidence which tied him directly to the Gouda Museum burglary.   

In June 2013 the investigation department of the Central Netherlands police, working on the Eiffel investigation into a series of explosions and ram raids at jewellers caught suspects Nils Menara and Erik P., on tape relating to two criminal events, one of which was a conversation about explosives and the other the 2012 Gouda museum theft.  The pair also talked about the Schiphol Airport diamond robbery in 2005, to the great frustration of the police and judicial authorities as the suspects had been previously arrested for this, but then released due to lack of evidence.

Upon his arrest for the Gouda Museum burglary, Menara was found to have heavy weapons, ammunition, money and drugs in his house. 

Thankfully, this time, his charges stick and on 5 February 2016 Menara was sentenced by the court in Utrecht to six years in prison for the robbery at the Gouda museum, two years less than the sentence requested by the Public Prosecution Service. 

Debris covering stairs inside the Donetsk Academic Regional Drama Theatre following a March 16, 2022, bombing in Mariupol, Ukraine. Image Credit AP - Alexei Alexandrov

As the year comes to a close, it's time to highlight (some) of the losses, and a few of the successes from the year 2022 before we look ahead to what 2023 will bring.  

In 2022 we witnessed Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine, taking thousands of lives and creating a tragic humanitarian crisis.  One symbol of both heritage and human loss was the airstrike upon the historic Donetsk Academic Regional Drama Theatre in Mariupol, a cultural landmark where hundreds of people had been sheltering as a result of the city's siege.  The theatre strike serves as painful testimony to the cost of war and the painfully permanent scale of destruction to the Ukrainian port city and ints inhabitants, as Russia's primary target in Ukraine's southeastern region of Donbas.  

Evidence collected by the AP estimates that as many as 600 civilians may have died as a result of the theatre's March 16th double airstrike, which placed this cultural institution directly in the crosshairs of the conflict.  This despite the centre's obvious civilian character and the fact that the displaced individuals who sought refuge there had plainly marked the pavement, in front of each entrance to the structure, with the word дети (children), written in Cyrillic and could be seen cooking daily meals outside.  

Five days later and just a few blocks away, Russia's bombardment also heavily damaged the Kuindzhi Art Museum, dedicated to the life and work of local realist painter Arkhip Kuindzhi.  Kuindzhi’s works were not in the museum at that time,  however, the fate of other artworks in the museum remains difficult to ascertain. 

It total UNESCO has documented 64 damaged or destroyed sites of historical and/or artistic interest in the Donetsk Region alone. 

As of December 23rd, throughout Ukraine, again according to UNESCO, the agency has verified damage at 102 religious sites, 18 museums, 81 buildings of historical and/or artistic interest, 19 monuments, and 11 libraries.

Outside Ukraine, two themes for 2022 are museums, and those in charge of them, behaving badly, and crime doesn't pay. 

On the West Coast, the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles saw its hand forced by the same East Coast prosecutor, following an ongoing criminal investigation by DANY.  That investigation resulted in the California museum relinquishing, post-seizure, its looted group of life-size terracotta figures known as Orpheus and the Sirens back to Italy. 

Things were no quieter for museums over in Europe and the Middle East, where over the summer, France saw its former director of the Musée du Louvre, Jean-Luc Martinez and archaeologist-curator Jean-Francois Charnier formally charged for “complicity“ in having facilitated $50 million in acquisitions of illicit material by the Louvre Abu Dhabi, connected to investigations of suspect antiquities dealers Roben Dib (currently in French custody) and Germany-based dealer Serop Simonian.

As legal investigations usually take several years to unfold in France, Martinez and Charnier have been released under judicial supervision while a ruling of the examining chamber is expected in the new year, which some say, may see these preliminary charges dropped.

Dealers who behaved badly include Inigo Philbrick who received an 84 month prison sentence in May in connection with a multi-year scheme to defraud various collectors and business entities in order to finance his art business.

Eighty year old Raffaele Monticelli, a man considered by various Italian prosecutors to be one of the biggest middle-tier traffickers of archaeological finds in Europe, died in October.  Still active in smuggling illicit material out of Italy, he had only recently returned home to Taranto following the conclusion of a short prison sentence involving a looted helmet in circulation in the Netherlands. 

Also in the Netherlands, the Dutch appeals court confirmed the 8 year prison sentence in July for 59 year old Nils Menara, a professional burglar known on the street as 'Gauwtje' for his role in the thefts of two paintings, The Parsonage Garden at Nuenen in Spring (1884), by Vincent van Gogh, and Two Laughing Boys with a Mug of Beer by Frans Hals.  The two paintings, worth $20 million are still missing. 

In France, the 33rd criminal chamber of the Paris Judicial Tribunal held a decision in October in a case where Egypt requested the restitution of Egyptian antiquities within a criminal proceeding against Didier Wormser, who was accused of dealing stolen cultural property from the Saqqara necropolis. The director of the Star of Ishtar gallery, was given a three-year suspended prison sentence. 

In India, November saw disgraced antiques dealer Subhash Kapoor convicted of burglary and the illegal export of 19 antique idols during his first completed trial to date, held in the town of Kumbakonam in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu.   With more court cases to follow, Kapoor was handed a 10-Year jail sentence for this first conviction.  The judge also imposed sentences on Kapoor's accomplices: Sanjivi Asokan, Marichamy, Packiya Kumar, Sri Ram alias Ulagu and Parthiban. 

In happier news, the last month of the 2022, marked the month where German police successfully recovered 31 of the priceless 18th-century jewellery pieces stolen from  the Royal Palace that houses the historic Green Vault (Gruenes Gewoelbe) in Dresden in 2019.   

Let's hope 2023 is a year of recoveries, more successful prosecutions and an end to conflicts.