«According to authorities, the criminal group was operating around the world since 2005. The fraudsters managed to skillfully forge the work of Wassily Kandinsky, Kasimir Malevich, Mikhail Larionov and other Russian avant-garde. "
"In search of the bandits guards combed dozens of apartments in Bavaria, Hesse, Hamburg, Baden-Württemberg and Rhineland-Palatinate. As a result, in the hands of the authorities were two criminals, one of whom is 67 years old and the other - 41. Their names and nationalities were not disclosed. "
As the President of the Federal Police Joerg Circus, "the investigation could seriously undermine the international scene figures fakes."
The guards shook not only apartments, but antique shops, private art galleries, and not only in Germany, but in Spain, Switzerland, Israel and Russia. Personal statement of Mr. Circus shows that Germans are confident in the successful resolution of the case.
When the excitement wears off international (claimed composition, perhaps drawn to the fraud, but not for banditry), which will remain in the bottom line?
To begin with (think of it, the binomial theorem) will be called the main characters of the event. The one who supposedly 67 years - I think he really still 76 - Israeli of Libyan descent Yitzhak Zarug. "Bandit" '41 years old - a German citizen, a native of Tunisia Moez Ben Hazaz.
The headquarters of the Federal Police of Germany is located in the state of Hesse in Wiesbaden. There, on the corner of fashionable Taunusstraße, a minute's walk from the main pedestrian area of ​​the town, until 2010 housed the elegant art gallery SNZ, where these "bandits" offered all the representatives of the Russian avant-garde, and not only the avant-garde, and many dozens, if not hundreds, names of famous artists.
It is amazing that a half-century-old graduate of the Israeli vocational specialty metal cutting Zarugu and North African market trader Ben Hazazu able to remember and correctly pronounce almost as many Russian families.
Frankly, I do not just zahazhivala the gallery, and never ceased to wonder where the firewood, and even in such numbers. Curiosity brought me to the myriad sources of foreign wealth: the backrooms of our museums. Fakes - yes, they were, as always, generously diluted Supplied exhibits, but what a fake! Fake these originate from a joint project of Anastas Mikoyan Emmanuilovich with Igor Grabar, although avant-garde, of course began to make the wrong legendary times, but much later.
Prices were paid middlemen, including arrest in the case, not as a copy of, but as for the real work of famous artists. Discounts provided quite reasonable given the lack of work in the catalogs raisonné and the lack of provenance.
Zaruga, Ben Hazaza and other international media has already declared (without mentioning their names) artists - authors fakes. I can vouch that the brush in their hands they held except for painting the fence. Semi-literate Ben Hazaza summed vanity: he even published a book about the Russian vanguard of the German language, which somehow mastered. German investigators are now searching the day the fire workshops where made fake. Politeness requires wish them every success in this hopeless case.
Source: http://forum-msk.org/material/kompromat/9941201.html