Forgery ring made millions

POLICE ACROSS Europe have broken up what appears to be one of the most lucrative art forgery operations so far discovered, peddling bogus Russian avant-garde works internationally for tens of millions of dollars.

Suspicions were aroused when Italian police investigating an art deal in 2008 confiscated K19, a painting said to date from 1919 and attributed to the abstract pioneer Wassily Kandinsky.

It was put up for auction in Milan in 2005 but was ruled a forgery this year. Experts told the Milan court that some of the paint was ‘‘not even completely dry’’.

The painting supposedly belonged to Edik Natanov, a mysterious businessman who claimed to be from Uzbekistan and to have inherited it from his grandfather.

According to Der Spiegel, the German news weekly, Germany’s Federal Criminal Police ( BKA) believe that two of his business partners are the ‘‘marketing directors’’ of a cartel that has, they claim, flooded the art market and sold at least 400 forged paintings by early 20th century Russian art- ists for ‘‘four sums’’ each.

The BKA’s research led to a gallery in the German city of Wiesbaden run by Natanov and his two partners and to nearly 1000 suspicious paintings and drawings.

A 53-year-old painter in St Petersburg caught forging three paintings in Tel Aviv in January may have been responsible for some of the fakes, investigators believe.

Natanov insists that his artworks are authenticated. He has not been charged with any crime.

to

seven-figure euro