he knows how to hunt down a masterpiece lost for decades no matter if it's decorating somebody's backyard or hidden beneath the murky waters of the underground art world the indiana jones of lost art historian and detective arthur brand is my guest. still purses and wallets others might get kozel hells as well some still hold budgets but there is a criminal underworld with exquisite taste in which people steal contemporary and selling the finest crafted treasures on the black market want to. give the dog. why is that crime more sophisticated than other speeches and how do you.

to retrieve lost most a piece of. ours or brand historian and our detective welcome to the show great to have you with us mr brown so. the media call you indiana jones of the art world but as far as i can tell from your own accounts your job isn't as action packed i mean it's more like dan brown no well you said that you deal with it and underworld and obviously you're risking your life sometimes so why like the most dire threats you say i don't know the colombian necktie or where your family lives do you take this threat seriously. sometimes you get threats it's normal in the underworld in the criminal world they cannot go to a judge they do not have access to the to justice so day have to use threats so they also do it to me but i don't take them too serious you know. if you keep your

words with criminals of with somebody else most of the time you're quite safe but it does mean that i do have to keep my words and of course i have to be cautious stance as keeping your word always depend on you yes because if they don't keep their word says they cannot go to the police they can not go to to a lawyer or to to a judge so they have their own criminal. laws and you have to accept those laws and those laws. keep your words. betrayed things like that. and you are pretty safe around for a way out or stand you have a reputation there right that's why they say to people trust you you earn their trust your reputation in a world like that by just keeping your words or is there something else they have to do for for them to trust you know it's it's a reputation every time when i meet new people i have to gain their trust over and

over again because i always say in the underworld in a criminal well today only trust their own mothers they don't trust each other because your friend of the day can be your enemy of tomorrow so. it's building up a reputation and they now know that i keep my words i have had some cases and i always kept my word so they know what i do they know how i do it but again every time you have to gain the trust again. so. tell us how it's happening so we can visualize it you sit down to talk to them is it in a fancy place like fancy restaurant in public or by the fireplace at home with a bottle of wine or i know some kind of a strip joint backroom with cocaine all over the table when we were just exchanging messages on the darn lab how do you guys communicate where do you meet to actually do business well 1st of all when i have

a lead and i know which one i have to go which criminal i try to find his number his telephone number because they're not in the yellow pages so that i give them a call and they are in shock because they think how does brant know and then they sent an intermediary to me most of the time these people just run us for the big bosses and they come with. the baklava or whatever and we always meet in dark places i can get a call at 10 at night. and then somebody says mr brent's we expect you at that place. in 2 hours so sometimes you don't know who you're going to meet it's mostly in dark places it's not the day. that we meet in a restaurant because there was always cameras etc there are always afraid that they are being followed so i always have to go to shady places how intertwined standards

around our world with the legal art world can somebody working at solid base appraising department also do some work on the side for the mafia. you coming close is not that particular example but for example the museum directors who have changed their entire collection for fakes. the legal world the legal and illegal worlds meet each other because the illegal outlawed when you make a fake for example you want to have it sold at sotheby's or at christie's if you buy antiquities stolen antiquities recently unearthed it in let's say syria which are illegal if you try to sell them at an auction house. in the past to have been examples of these 2 worlds coming together and it's not for nothing that the cia has said that the illegal art world is the 4th biggest. illegal criminal.

business in the world so we're talking here about many many billions and the thing is the supply of art and antiquities is always smaller than what they want so people have to have access to the criminal underworld because they are the persons who can supply route and take for example so. it's a shady will the articles and to be honest some of the most respected people in the legal world have be have ended behind bus because they were doing things they weren't supposed to do so let me ask you this where you average tempted to leave the art piece you found here or south in must of a i mean. have you ever had an impulse to just own that masterpiece have it for yourself. of course i had to because so my wallet was stolen and i

recovered it and before handing it over busy i wanted to put it on my wall for one night i thought it was 25000000 dollars worth put it down turns out it is worth $70000000.00 this because oh so i headed there on my wall busy and i was looking at it and i thought. it was a little bit tempting to keep it but i'm not like that you cannot do it it's not working to recover stolen off but of course you can imagine when you are watching such because so at your wall that you think. well i could retire if i would like to . it's tempting but i will never fall for it never say never i'm just getting so obvious so aren't. objects so are they are there too easy to take care of and i handle painting handling pick paintings require very good care we have to keep them at the right temperature the packaging statues came a pretty big unhappy and with a well known artist i mean this things could be more or less easily weaponize it

will hollow they move such delicate cargo around as horrible it's really horrible when you look at a painting a picasso in a museum you see a beautiful painting they see. a bill of 10000000 euros or whatever so sometimes they cut it out of the frame they wall it up the wrong side it's always the wrong side and they move it in the trunk of a car they hide it in in a woods. or under the bed of grandmother who has a very high temperature in a home so it's horrible and that's disappoint normally when our thesis break into museum they still out and the next day they think they can sell it to somebody because you cannot sell stolen art everybody knows the piece so then mostly they destroy it but the. some cases they don't and they start to use it as a payment in the criminal underworld but even then after 5 or 10 years the painting

falls thoughts because it's not stored well there was a very well known case kind of odd showed it was stolen in 69 in. sicily a very important painting and somebody from the mafia just said a few years ago that they had stored stored it in a ball. and when they wanted to pick it up it was gone because the ritz had eaten it so we are not talking here with about museum curators we're talking here about. people who treat a car better than a piece or not. as the piece of art for them a chest money and nothing else they doesn't represent any other values and he had a case once where the fake lack had where you prove that an artifact thought to be thousands years old busy was a forgery now unless it has to certificates from all the bass laps is it a one of a kind case or can afford to be so good that even experts take it for

a real deal it's absolutely more common than rare 30 percent on the market is fake either it's complete fake or they have messed messed with it this all make heads as you said all the lever tories in the world and all the experts had declared it to be 3000 years old they had put a value of 50000000 euros on it and then i found pictures of somebody covering this head and as you know 3000 years ago there were no pictures you could not take a picture so dismantled that the head was. new so that's showed that all these experts and all these lever authorities they try to do their best but the forges are quite good and sometimes they. the experts busy you can buy says an expert some of the time so that makes it even more complicated

the fortunes are very good and on the other hand who can you trust in the art world because if you can sell a piece for $15000000.00. you don't ask yourself too much questions is it real or not you can make 50000000 dollars so that's a big problem in the art world all right do you prefer to deal with a high profile cases finding big names are like researching for a less known but still high valley are or explore why and then for pick asses and bottle chalice well it depends busy i found back to visit caught stone will you have stolen from a church in spain world heritage and not many people know about that the physical aspect when you start to read about it and. it's that was really dumb brown story in there was stolen from a church that dated from the 7th century the church was forgotten 4th out more

than a 1000 years and it was rediscovered in 1021 so it was a time capsule so when you start to read about antiquities of odds every piece has its own beauty some people prefer because of rembrandt or whatever but there was always a story attached to it there was always a history when you read about it every pieces is beautiful i can tell you $11.00 example there was this porcelain service which i'm normally not interested in that was stolen in world war 2 from a jewish family and i we trace it in the collection of the royal dutch family which was quite a big scandal. and no money i was not interested in parcel in but when you start to search such a beautiful piece and you find it and you read about it it becomes something. very beautiful so every time now that i go to a museum i look 1st at the ball saloon. right after the way and take

a short break right now when we're back we'll continue talking to arthur bray and hard to talk to about this story and about the dark side of that art market stay with us.

and a very warm welcome to you watching us inside. seemed wrong. wrong just don't call. me if you get to shape out. become educated and in gains from it equals betrayal. when so many find themselves worlds apart if we choose to look for common ground. the. manufactured consensus public will. when the right wing closest to protect themselves. with the frame of.

the room sit. room. there we're back with our saran our detective know a nasty indiana jones of the law starts talking about the shadow art market so ours are just recently you found an actual picasso stolen ears ago from a saudi shapes yacht and you say you heard the rumors of the painting being accused as a collateral and a dutch underworld got in touch with the people all that's all they were there and basically had it delivered right to your home but why would they just do that i

mean drop it for free you must see it like this in many cases when it's stolen is. being used in the underworld as a payment so one criminal owes another criminal money and he keeps him a painting a picasso and says this because of his from my grandmother very beautiful. i'm going to come to bring you the money in a month but they don't come so this guy things i have this because so and then he starts to sell it and people tell him to stoughton be careful so then he do sustain tricks with the next criminal and it goes around and around and around and sometimes when i know who has it at a certain moment i approach them and i make them an offer they can't refuse i tell them look. this because so is stolen i know you have it i know you are not the thief you had nothing to do with the theft. i am not i mean i am in my view way to

way with the op but. then my question is if this is like a well known technique where people just gave paintings the collateral instead of money and then he figured out it's stolen and the one who owns the money never comes back with money and it's a it's a common thing you're saying so criminals must be aware of that so why is it still like a thing of paying off if you know that you can't sell that painting and if you know that probably they're giving you the painting and the money will never follow yeah well in some cases one criminal can or paid you're a criminal so your. well then gives me because whatever anything better than. no money so there are a lot of reasons why. this is being accepted as a payment in the not only in the underworld also in some legal deals paintings are used as payments of course not stolen paintings but they're being used as payment

so is there are people who have a nice all this collection to go to a bank and ask for a loan. for this for this so it's painting statues are commonly used. to get money for a loan or whatever or spaceman's and deal in the world has adopted that and also does this. follow does this thing how they did it so the picasso you found. is really to have changed up to 20 owners before you recovered it in cases one artworks are tracked after decades of disappearances it was impossible to define who had stolen them in the 1st place. no and that's one of the reasons why i think we in holland are quite successful the dutch police because you know after 2 years of 5 years or 10 years the piece has been changed hands so many times that the current owner has no idea he might know who gave it to him but it could also be an

unknown criminal group so you never come back to the previous the original thieves so forget about debts what we did in holland is after a certain period of time let's focus on the arts to recover the art and not go after the thieves and don't forget in most cases this art is stolen without anybody get murdered or anybody get harmed is it's quite like a. normal burglary only dead in this case they don't steal your television they steal it because all but officially it's just a burglary so after a couple of years 10 or 20 years it's not about getting the thieves you'll never get them probably the statute of limitation has ended so you cannot even prosecute them so then the focus should be get the art back and especially because these guys carry these around in the trunk of the cars so. you have to hurry to get this

back at all because if not it's. so in $28.00 in the united nations warned that isis was doing some industrial scale looting in iraq and syria and the general concern is that the stolen artifacts could soon surface whether on the black market or even legitimate auction houses did you encounter any objects of this kind in your work or are they easier to smugglers to these is for smugglers to get in. absolutely i was wanting for this already in 2006 when i wrote a book and i already mentioned it nobody took it serious but no it's quite serious they call it brought on t.x. the problem is this. these groups like the taliban al qaeda and i says they. conquer a certain area which is full of treasures so days start to dig and sell these

treasures on the black market and they use that money for funding funding though attacks and the problem is this busy the greek face for example is not the only found in greece because 2000 years ago greece was an empire they traded with everybody so the greeks face that is found for example in syria or greek statue which might come from i says it's very hard to prove that this quick face comes from syria and not from let's say greece or italy so do a lot of ways for these people to falsify paperwork etc so then it comes on the markets legitimate and people buy it's museums have bought it in the post you can find them at auction houses you can find. deals we made a few documentaries about that with hidden camera and some of these of the less confessed that these pieces came. recently from let's say afghani stumm so dead

is a quite a big trades and busy it says because they use these beautiful busy treasures from the beginning of civilization from 234000 years old they use it to fund to destroy civilization so how sad is that so you actually had a case oh stolen artifacts to 2 stones relieved from the church known as sunday night he had a ladder that you returned in this case to safeguard and sell their release. for what they were so they sell them as garden ornaments could they rock in their own artifacts also are now being sold as some exotic nothings like how hard would it be to. actually tracked them down in some one garden friends very hot because there was a difference between the case you just mentioned this physical it will yes from spain believe they were world heritage there were known pictures existed so they could

not sell it anymore for what it was they sold it has got a moments but with the stuff that is coming from the soil in let's say syria these pieces have been in a soil for 2000 years no pictures exists so nobody knows that they have been just an earth it let's say last year or so dispy pieces come to the markets let's say in germany they put a paper. they attach a paper to is in which is stated displease belongs to an old english noble family. 50 years ago and they sold it in 1982 and the current oh no so then people think this piece is legit it's not stolen recently from syria so it's quite it's quite easy it's very difficult for the police to prove that a certain piece which is now being offered at an auction house. was recently

illegally excavated in syria is very very difficult back in 215 you were working on the recovery of 24 paintings from ukraine now the museum that the paintings were stolen from offered the creative side at home percent finer city but they expected to have tear some attacks fall apart back then and only 5 out of $24.00 paintings were returned i mean how often does the money issue get in a way of bringing the stolen art back what happens with art works in this case. well many cases you know in this case the ukrainian military who had. in their possession and the ukrainian secret service that was involved to. let's say 20 people had possession of these stolen paintings out of the netherlands so what happens these people. negotiate with these paintings and they blow it up they say

these paintings are worth $5000000.00 and the next $810000000.00 and then the $50000000.00 in their minds so they spend this $50000000.00 already amongst each other and i come to negotiate innocent look we're not talking about here about 50000000 but about half a 1000000. so then they don't say oh well you have them though then they can. start to show to start to tretton you so money always come comes in the way of these cases unfortunately people always think that when they steal money they still are they can make money but in most cases so let me ask you something you are saying that you don't make much money out of this trade i'm actually really surprised that you're not like super rich you deal with artifacts that cost tens and hundreds of millions of dollars i mean how come there's no money in it for you well i own my money with lot of things i advise collectors has said 30 percent only

of market is fake i that's my job i help jewish families to recover stolen and well for 2 i write books i give lectures that's where i make my money and these big cases that make headlines all over the world. it's not that's not about money i'm normally don't get paid maybe an hourly rates and that's because. i don't they were stolen from somebody else i am not entitled if there was a reward i'm not entitled to the reward it's not me who is the current owner of the previous owner so those stories. there are for example busy many cases ended in the dutch case of the dutch museum you just talked about which turned up and in the ukraine the stolen paintings they were not insurance. the dutch museum was not very much is a small museum so when they ask me to do it they pay me an hourly rates and i'm happy with that. because for all my wall what 70000000 dollars 4

nights gives enough satisfaction that i'm not dying from mongo something like that all right i make an error a sharing only because i was worried for you anyway it's been a really wonderful interview thank you so much for this insights such an interesting topic good luck with everything we're talking to our survey and our detective and historian discussing his most famous cases and the shady ways of the underworld art market that's it for this edition of so i think i'll see you next.

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iran is again in the spotlight just what is trumps foreign policy in this volatile . u.s. presidential hopeful tells again about fails to make it through to the next round of democratic debates despite becoming the most that's for candidates online she's not questioning the d.n.c. selection process. in other news a frenchman vows to appeal after losing his bottle to protect people in his village for volatile pesticides we get reaction from locals. and. i think the government isn't doing its job they're the 1st to say that there should be no path to sites but they did nothing we breathe the in the press the sites we did during tests and the amount of best the science with found was alarmingly high.