Gustav Klimts found in a ic

Vienna – A Vienna court on Monday found a freight forwarder guilty of stealing art estimated to be worth €1.3 million (ab0ut R22.5 million) and stashing drawings by famous Austrian artist Gustav Klimt in his parents’ attic.

The court handed down a two-year suspended jail term to the 45 year old after finding him guilty of theft, according to Christina Salzborn, spokesperson of the Vienna Criminal Court.

The 2012 theft from an Austrian depot had gone unnoticed until 2013, when several pieces were sold by international auction houses but then noted as missing and subsequently reported as stolen.

Among the works the man took were sculptures, artefacts, paintings and drawings, including by Klimt and Egon Schiele, two of the country’s most renowned painters.

“He was, so to say, an art collector who could not acquire what he was passionate about in a legal way,” Markus Dittrich, spokesperson for the Vienna police, which worked the case, said. –