For information. ("Scotland Yard" referred to in the three articles is
the headquarters of the Metropolitan Police, London.)
Patrick Boylan
======================================
January 29 2000
BRITAIN
Art smuggler 'protected by Yard as he helped
with stings'
BY DALYA ALBERGE AND DANIEL MCGRORY
SCOTLAND YARD has launched an investigation into how a
notorious self-confessed art smuggler worked for them on
undercover "sting" operations for a decade in return for
protection for his own activities.
Michel van Rijn, a Dutch art dealer, has told The Times: "For
years the Yard turned a blind eye to when my shipments were
coming into Britain. I made millions out of this arrangement. I also
had leverage with the police for my friends."
>From his continental hideout, van Rijn claimed that before coming
to Britain he would telephone certain detectives to ensure that
there were no warrants for his arrest here or in other European
capitals. He alleged his links with the Yard continued until only a
few weeks ago, adding: "They all knew what I was doing."
Van Rijn revealed how a detective recently told him, in effect, to
lie under oath to French police about his involvement in an
undercover operation to retrieve stolen bronzes.
Former Yard officers have confirmed that over the years the
49-year-old dealer did help them to recover stolen art treasures
from abroad worth "several million pounds". Senior Metropolitan
Police figures admit that last year van Rijn arranged for detectives
to meet a businessman with known Mafia links to take part in a
planned undercover operation.
The Yard paid for van Rijn's airline tickets and hotels for a further
meeting with the underworld figure in Switzerland to discuss a
"sting" to retrieve a looted art treasure. Van Rijn claimed that, had
the operation succeeded, he was to receive £1 million, paid by a
foreign government. He said the Yard promised immunity.
In a mobile telephone call with a detective, taped by van Rijn, the
officer is heard assuring him - "What you are doing currently,
you are bulletproof. You have the 100 per cent backing of the
Commissioner of Scotland Yard . . . You have the classic
Nuremberg defence - you were only following orders."
Van Rijn, who has four children, has threatened to reveal explicit
details of his decade of undercover operations on his Internet
website, claiming that police reneged on promises to protect him
and his family from underworld threats. Detectives yesterday
denied offering any protection. "As he lives most of the time
abroad how could we do that even if we had wanted to?" one
senior source said.
Van Rijn said that he had never been paid by Scotland Yard, nor
had he asked for money: "The deal was they just let me get on
with my own business."
Last night a senior Yard officer said: "I can confirm that senior
Organised Crime Group officers concerned about a member of the
public's relationship with the OCG over a period of approximately
ten years have referred this matter to the Complaints
Investigation Bureau. We are not prepared to discuss anything
further."
It is understood that the inquiry will involve operations that van
Rijn worked on for the Yard as well as the dealer's "own business
activities". This will include deals such as his allegation to the
Times that he sold a fake Degas bronze for £300,000 after it had
been in the Yard's possession. Mr Van Rijn said that he used a
Yard associate to have police drop their investigation into "a
close friend, a French dealer trading in London" who was in
possession of a 3rd-century sculpture, a limestone head
smuggled from Cyprus. His lawyers have written to Sir Paul
Condon, the outgoing Yard Commissioner, to sever his links and
insist that detectives do not try to contact him. The Times has
seen that correspondence, including Yard acknowledgements.
Mr van Rijn told the Times: "They promised protection . . . and
have not kept their part of the bargain. Nor have they acted on
information I have given them about key figures in the British art
establishment."
He said that until last year he was assisting an inquiry into a
hoard of gold and silver, known as the Western Cave Treasure,
discovered in Iran.
Former Yard officers who recruited him have written
endorsements about his help, which Mr van Rijn says are on his
Dutch website. He added: "After all that has happened the only
one to blame is me. I went into this with my eyes open."
-------------------------------------------
THE TIMES (London)
January 29 2000
BRITAIN
Claim of plot to kill Milosevic
BY DALYA ALBERGE AND DANIEL MCGRORY
MICHEL VAN RIJN plans to use his website to reveal years of
undercover operations for Scotland Yard and others. He wants
his disclosures to embarrass the British Museum, Sotheby's,
Christie's and other leading art dealers as well as the security
services.
Among his more extravagant claims is that he was approached by
MI6 to be part of a plot to assassinate President Milosevic. Mr
Van Rijn alleges that he was asked to name influential people he
knew in the Serb underworld who could get close to Mr
Milosevic.
Asked how much he wanted for taking part, Mr van Rijn says he
replied: "The price of a Harrier jet, about £15 million." He claims
that the Serbs, and others from elsewhere in the former
Yugoslavia, who were involved in the plot, are threatening his life
because they have not been paid.
Scotland Yard has examined Mr van Rijn's website, which is in
Dutch, and are angered that it suggests a link to the Metropolitan
Police. It includes a quote, said to come from the Yard, that Mr
van Rijn has been "involved in 90 per cent of all art smuggling in
the world and he would like to be involved in the last 10 per
cent". He says the remark was made by a retired detective.
"I am realistic enough to know that I can never win the fight
against your Government, MI6, Scotland Yard - but I will at the
same time not bow to them," Mr van Rijn said. "It is my intention
to create a site where the so-called well-established institutions -
Sotheby's, Christie's, etc - and frauds, rogues, scams in the art
market will be exposed and displayed."
He claims to have documents from museums in Britain and abroad
dealing with fakes and forgeries in their collections. "People will
see how dangerous it is to put your trust in these institutions and
experts," he said.
Mr Van Rijn says that he enjoys "puncturing pompous balloons".
"This will be everything you want to know but you are afraid to
ask about the art world."
------------------------------
January 29 2000
Art mole threatens to turn tables on Yard
handlers
BY DALYA ALBERGE AND DANIEL MCGRORY
MICHEL VAN RIJN, the self-confessed art smuggler who worked
undercover for Scotland Yard, has never been shy about his
dubious activities in the art world. His claims about the millions
he made through his links with the Yard are typical of his passion
for causing embarrassment.
As detectives begin their inquiry into Mr van Rijn's role with the
Metropolitan Police, he claims to have tape-recordings and
documents detailing his ten years as an undercover agent. "They
have reneged on promises to me, so I will now tell everything I
know about them, and they will not like it," he told The Times
yesterday.
A flamboyant figure, with a penchant for self-publicity, he would
seem a risky choice to work undercover for the Yard. But the
officers who first recruited him nearly a decade ago were prepared
to gamble on his worth as a key informant, knowing his links with
the underworld.
All those detectives are now retired, but one said that whatever
else Mr van Rijn did, the officers had no doubts that he was
responsible for retrieving "several million pounds worth of art
treasures from abroad".
Mr van Rijn includes written testimonies from detectives on his
website, which he now intends to use for his revenge on the
police and the intelligence services who, he says, reneged on
promises to protect him and his four children.
There is believed to be a lack of documentary evidence inside
Scotland Yard about how Mr van Rijn began working for the
police and his early years with them. He claims he was first
introduced by the FBI, which cleared him as a suspect in a major
art robbery, then asked him to work for them.
He says his operations for the Yard took him to at least ten
countries. A heavily built figure with an exotic dress sense, the
49-year-old dealer knew the problems he was posing for the Yard
last May in one of his final operations with them. He suggested
the Yard meet a business friend of his who has links with a
Sicilian Mafia family.
The operation was so sensitive that detectives had their first
meeting with the wealthy entrepreneur and Mr van Rijn in the
British Embassy in Madrid so as not to alert Spanish police to
their intended "sting" to retrieve a looted art treasure.
There were further meetings in Europe, with Mr van Rijn's travel
and accommodation paid for by the Yard, but detectives were
doubtful that the plan could succeed and abandoned the
operation.
Mr Van Rijn claims his links also extend to MI6, saying he was
invited to meet intelligence officers last year because of his links
with the Serb underworld.
At the same time as he claims to have been approached by MI6,
Mr van Rijn was working with detectives on an inquiry into a
hoard of gold and silver discovered in Iran in the late 1980s,
known as the "Western Cave Treasure".
He claims that this treasure, worth £80 million and dating from the
5th century BC, was discovered buried in a cave by a shepherd in
the late 1980s and then illegally smuggled out of Iran to London
and the West. He alleges that the provenance of some pieces of
the treasure was then falsified by an academic and part of the
collection sold to the Miho museum in Japan. Exhibits from the
Miho's collection are currently on loan to the Antiquities
Museum in Leiden, including an ornate gold drinking horn.
Both the Miho Museum and the Leiden museum insist that they
have thoroughly investigated the origin of the pieces and are
convinced of their authenticity and legal ownership.
Mr Van Rijn alleges that as well as helping Yard detectives, he
has been assisting diplomats in the Iranian Embassy in London
on this inquiry.
French police want to question him about another of his
operations with the Yard, involving the recovery of 19th-century
bronzes stolen in Brussels. Part of this cache surfaced in London,
which explains the Yard's interest, but Mr Van Rijn said he paid
£15,000 of his own money for some of the bronze pieces he
tracked down in Amsterdam, which he handed over to a Yard
detective.
He has been subpoenaed to give evidence to French
investigators, but alleges a senior detective has told him in effect
to lie under oath about his relationship with the Yard.
The inquiry by the Complaints Investigation Bureau into the Van
Rijn affair will also investigate claims of how the dealer says he
profited from the Yard, "turning a blind eye to my own business
dealings".
Mr van Rijn claimed to The Times that he made a £300,000 profit
on selling a fake Degas bronze which had been in the possession
of Scotland Yard. He had passed the fake to a Yard detective who
"ran" many of his undercover operations. The detective later
returned it to him, but by now the bronze was wrapped in a
package that carried a label and other identification from the
Metropolitan Police.
"When the dealer asked me if it was genuine I pointed out that it
had come to me straight from the police," explaining that the
purchaser happily accepted that it must be genuine.
Mr van Rijn boasted about some of his earlier exploits in an
autobiography, Hot Art, Cold Cash, released by a leading British
publisher, which he says made him "many, many enemies".
A dentist's son from Amsterdam, who owns several houses
around the world, he admits smuggling icons out of Russia,
Cyprus, Greece and elsewhere. "I have made millions and lost
millions but yes I have plenty of money" is how he describes his
wealth.
One of his most elaborate business coups was the sale of a
Rembrandt to a Tokyo art dealer for eight times its then market
value. Mr van Rijn let the Japanese purchaser believe he was a
descendant of the painter because they shared the same family
name.
"I love to prick the pomposity of the art world which thinks it
knows the value of everything," he said.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
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