Florence, Carabinieri recover 695 stolen works: the thief was a Florentine carpenter

695 stolen works worth three million were recovered. The investigation lasted three years, coordinated by the Public Prosecutor's Office at the Court of Florence and conducted by the Carabinieri Cultural Heritage Protection Unit in Florence, in cooperation with the FBI and the Carabinieri's Scientific Investigation Group. It all stems from the report of theft, filed in 2021 by a Florentine citizen, of the very important book work by Leonhart Fuchs entitled 'De Historia Stirpium Commentarii Isignes', Basel 1542, which was stolen by unknown persons from the residence between December 2018 and June 2019. The work, spotted on the website of a Florentine auction house exactly one year after it had been reported, was then seized in Florence from an antiquarian from Veneto, who was considered during the investigation to be a bona fide purchaser.

At a press conference, Claudio Mauri, commander of the Carabinieri Department for the Protection of Cultural Heritage in Florence, announced that 'the person behind the sale of the works was collaborating with a person who was doing carpentry work inside noble houses and, unbeknownst to the owners, was taking the goods away. We are talking about about 600 goods with a total value of over 3 million'.

The important recovery generated the start of a complex investigation activity involving, in various capacities, a total of 12 suspects, against whom as many searches were carried out on behalf of the investigating magistracy, leading to the recovery of more than 600 works of art. There were numerous valuable works of art, precious ceramics and various paintings, among which stand out for their importance: 4 white ceramic plates with decorations, stamped 'Manifattura Ginori in Doccia near Florence', made exclusively for the Presidency of the Italian Republic; a service in very fine porcelain with pure gold decorations, Meissen 1820; a plate from the Ming dynasty late Kangxi period of the late 17th century. a painting depicting an 'ox' signed Giovanni Fattori; a book work entitled 'De Honesta Disciplina' with Giorgio Vasari's autograph signature.

The recovered works, which were kept in luxurious Florentine noble residences, were stolen over a five-year period by one of the suspects while carrying out minor maintenance work commissioned by the owners. The goods were then placed, some time after the theft, on the domestic antiques market and, in some cases, on the foreign market, concealing their criminal origin. The export outside the national borders saw the FBI and, later, the Interpol service collaborate in the investigation, initially in order to attempt the return home, through extrajudicial action, of some works legitimately purchased by unsuspecting collectors, from the United States, the United Arab Emirates and England.

Thanks to the discovery of a ledger on which the accounting of the stolen works of art was reported in detail, it was possible to quantify the illicit and conspicuous turnover amounting to over EUR 300,000. It was quantified that, all the goods recovered during the investigation, which will return to the availability of their legitimate owners, as ordered by the Judicial Authority, if placed on the antiques market could have generated profits of over EUR 3 million.Today's result is a concrete example of the synergy between the Judiciary and the various Departments of the Carabinieri, to which is added the fundamental collaboration of the Ministry of Culture in its territorial ramifications, not detached from the indispensable action of the citizen's complaint who turned to the institutions in charge, making it possible, after some time, to unhinge a criminal activity that would have despoiled a cultural heritage of inestimable historical and artistic value.