Original subtitles

(dramatic orchestral music)

Argentina was in the grip

of a ruthless dictatorship

when the biggest art theft

in the country's history took place,

paintings by some of Europe's most famous artists

of the 19th and 20th centuries.

For more than 20 years, the works,

including some by Renoir, Gauguin, and Degas,

fell into a black hole.

Nothing was seen or heard of them

until an American woman walked into Sotheby's in London.

But where had the paintings been for two decades?

The robbery triggered dark rumors

of who might be behind the theft

and suggestions that the heist was part of

a huge arms-for-art deal to sustain the junta.

But why were these paintings targeted?

It was a mystery that crisscrossed three continents

and was finally resolved in a Parisian courtroom.

But would the museum in Buenos Aires

ever get its priceless collection back?

(dramatic orchestral music)

("Silent Night")

Buenos Aires, the capital of Argentina.

It's Christmas Eve 1980.

Argentina is under the yoke

of a brutal military dictatorship.

For many years, it has brought fear and apprehension.

But on this day,

life in the capital seems as normal as could be.

While most of the country is getting on

with the Christmas celebrations,

an extraordinary robbery is about to take place

at the nation's greatest art gallery.

A mysterious gang breaks into

the Museum of Fine Arts in the city center.

The treasures held in the museum

had been left virtually unguarded

over the Christmas period.

Sometime after midnight, a car pulls up outside the museum.

Its mysterious occupants make their way

towards the rear of the building.

(suspenseful orchestral music)

Once inside the museum,

the thieves seem to have the gallery to themselves.

They know exactly what they are after.

Their target is some of the gallery's most precious works.

Amongst the stolen paintings is

"Head of a Young Girl with a Blue Ribbon",

by Auguste Renoir,

"The Call", by Paul Gauguin,

and "The Road", by Paul Cézanne.

In all, 16 Impressionist paintings are stolen,

together with seven ornaments.

Their work done, the thieves make their way undetected

into the Buenos Aires night.

(light orchestral music)

With a few exceptions,

the stolen works had one thing in common,

they were part of the collection

of a wealthy Argentinean socialite

called Mercedes Santamarina.

The robbery was a devastating blow to the family.

The reaction of the family

when the collection was stolen

was we were very sad, really very sad

because the authorities were not able

to put the security measures,

the necessary or minimum security measures

to avoid this act.

It was not one piece of art that was stolen

but 16 pieces of art,

so it was an important action of the thieves.

So we were really very sad and very annoyed.

(dramatic orchestral music)

The theft was a huge loss to the nation

and to Argentina's foremost museum.

The Santamarina collection

is very, very important

for our fine-arts museum of Buenos Aires.

The collection is really, really, very important

and strong for us

because it's not only the quality of the paintings

but also it's also very, very important period.

In fact, only a small part

of the huge Santamarina collection

was stolen in the Christmas Eve heist,

and many of the most prized pieces

were missed altogether by the gang.

All these Degas are exceptional,

and they're part of the Santamarina collection,

particularly this one here.

It is said to be the biggest pastel work

made by Degas of dancers.

(dramatic orchestral music)

As well as the paintings,

the Mercedes collection also included

other exceptional pieces

which were left behind after the robbery.

There's objects and paintings here

which are more proper of a museum of decorative arts

than a fine-arts museum.

But the legacy had it as a condition

to be exhibited together,

and we have been trying to keep the atmosphere

of the 19th century,

which they wanted when they did donate it.

(dramatic orchestral music)

How the gang selected

which paintings to steal isn't clear,

except, it seems, only the smaller pieces were taken.

They did take two drawings from Degas.

Also a pencil drawing by Matisse.

Also a drawing by Rodin.

Maybe those were the most valuable things

that they took, all small pieces,

which I suppose they were easy to handle and easy to take.

Of course that was a great loss.

(light acoustic guitar music)

The Santamarina collection

had been brought together over decades by Mercedes.

She lived in luxury in Buenos Aires,

but she never married and had no children.

I remember when I visit

Mercedes Santamarina's house here in Buenos Aires,

and it was like visiting a museum.

I mean, it was, really.

The house was very tidy.

Everything was very correct.

There were no kids in that house,

so the house was very nice,

and it was like visiting a museum.

And I really liked that Renoir very much.

Mercedes Santamarina had a good eye.

(light orchestral music)

She flew to Paris very frequently,

and she bought many of the painters

and many of the pieces of art there.

Also here in Argentina, some of them.

(light acoustic guitar music)

During her lifetime,

Mercedes Santamarina had already donated

her vast and extraordinary collection

to the museum of fine art.

She liked to keep the collection all together,

and this was one of the main reasons

for keeping the collection in the country

in the best museum of Argentina.

She thought it was the best museum.

She decided to donate the whole collection

only with one condition,

there must be a permanent exhibition of this collection.

There has to be a specific place

called La Sala Mercedes Santamarina for that.

This was the collection

that was targeted by the robbers.

(dramatic orchestral music)

(speaking foreign language)

(alarm ringing)

The police investigation into the heist

started on Christmas Day.

We arrived at the museum on the 25th,

after lunchtime, when they discovered the robbery.

I remember very well the floor

and all the frames around and the police.

They cut all the frames, and they took the paintings

but leave the frames on the floor.

What soon became clear to investigators

was the absence of any real security at the gallery.

The entire museum was protected on Christmas Eve

by just one armed watchman and a fireman.

The fireman and the guard at some point had dinner

because it was Christmas night.

And had dinner and had some cider,

toasted, and went to bed by midnight.

(dramatic orchestral music)

Only in the morning,

they started walking through the galleries

as they normally did each day,

and there they found that they had been stolen.

So it must have occurred after midnight

and before they made their round the next morning,

so presumably three, four in the morning

that must have occurred.

(speaking foreign language)

(alarm ringing)

When the guards woke up,

it was already too late.

The thieves had escaped with the 16 paintings

and seven decorative objects.

All this new part of the museum

was being built at the time,

and the new galleries were being refurbished.

So the safety conditions at the time were quite low.

Police found that they came through

this part of the building, and they could easily jump in.

(light orchestral music)

There were no alarms.

There were no, really, security measures

that could have restrained the theft.

(dramatic orchestral music)

(footsteps thudding)

(engine revving)

But who could have been responsible

for this audacious robbery?

(speaking foreign language)

In 1980, Argentina had been living under the rule

of a military junta for four years.

Thousands of political activists,

trade unionists, and students disappeared, presumed dead.

Torture and state-sponsored killings by death squads

were commonplace.

The police and the security forces were above the law.

So who would uncover the truth

about the theft of the paintings?

(speaking foreign language)

At that time,

the Argentinean criminal justice system

was controlled by the military,

and the police were under the army.

So any possibility of a thorough investigation was denied.

With a military regime in Argentina,

the atmosphere was very heavy.

A very dangerous job was to be a journalist at that time.

For us that,

personally, I was a political correspondent.

The robbery was the priority number 12,000.

With 30,000 people disappearing,

to investigate who robbed the Impressionists

was my last priority.

Under this climate of fear,

no one came forward to provide information

about the robbery.

But there was one unnamed witness

who claimed to have seen something

that was enough to scare away anyone interested in the case.

(suspenseful orchestral music)

(speaking foreign language)

One of the very few

witness accounts said that,

at the time when the robbery occurred,

there was a green Ford Falcon parked outside the museum

with four people inside it.

(speaking foreign language)

The cars in which

the plainclothes intelligence agents operated

were the green Ford Falcons.

Those were the cars they used

to detain their political enemies,

the people who would later end up dead or disappeared.

The Ford Falcon was a horrendous image.

For us, was an image of terror,

with someone with a gun ordering all the cars to move away.

I was working in front of one of these police departments

that apparently was a concentration camp,

and I will never forget this fear

each time that we saw a Falcon verde.

Really, as the history tell you,

was a symbol of terror in Argentina.

(speaking foreign language)

It is widely suspected

that the area where the museum is located was liberated.

In Argentinean police jargon,

this means that before a crime occurs,

an agreement is reached with the authorities

in charge of the area where the crime will take place

so that they turn a blind eye

while the crime actually is taking place.

(suspenseful orchestral music)

So the rumors at that time were

that probably behind the robbery

was the secret service.

It made sense.

The secret service was perhaps the only organization

that could get away with such a brazen heist.

But if they were responsible,

who was going to take the blame?

A scapegoat needed to be found and found quickly,

and the easiest solution was to go for the softest target.

(speaking foreign language)

The main suspects for the robbery

were the two security guards who were at the museum

on the night of the robbery.

Some of the personnel of the museum was taken

and tortured to confess if they had done it.

After a terrible but brief ordeal,

the security guards were freed

and returned to their normal lives.

(speaking foreign language)

They were quickly cleared of any charges

because even under the dire situation at the time,

it was clear that the poor guys had nothing to do with it.

But who was responsible, then?

For years, the robbery from the fine-art museum

fell from public view.

(speaking foreign language)

But in 1982, the junta invaded the Falklands,

a British territory in the South Atlantic.

An international arms embargo was imposed.

British forces retook the islands in months.

The junta was humiliated by the defeat,

and within a year the military regime was gone.

It was only after the junta collapsed

that information about the art robbery began to leak out.

Amid infighting amongst shadowy intelligence groups,

a high-ranking kidnapping took place,

aimed at settling old scores between different factions.

A man suspected of being a double agent

was abducted and tortured.

His name was Patricio Kelly.

(speaking foreign language)

During the kidnap,

Patricio Kelly was almost killed.

The case was highly publicized.

In this case, the kidnapping had not

been motivated by money,

but for personal revenge, springing from the fights

between the different intelligence services

that existed in Argentina.

The man behind the kidnapping

was Anibal Gordon,

who worked for the most infamous intelligence service

operating at the time, the SIDE.

Gordon was sent to prison

for eight years for the kidnapping.

And it was in jail that evidence

implicating him in the robbery

from the fine-arts museum came to light,

allegedly from his own mouth.

(speaking foreign language)

When Anibal Gordon was already in prison

and dying from terminal cancer,

he told another prisoner

that he had been behind the robbery.

This was the man

who Gordon apparently confessed to.

His name was Juan Carlos Perez.

He was a prisoner with privileges.

He used to deliver food and clean the cellblock.

He was a common prisoner,

a former bank robber who had access to the part of the jail

where the people accused of state terrorism were held.

The prisoner told me this story personally.

(speaking foreign language)

A person who was on the brink of death

as Gordon was, as he was suffering from terminal cancer,

doesn't tend to lie.

He is meant to have complained of receiving too little money

for stealing the paintings,

following instructions from somebody else above him.

Perez is the only source

for Gordon's confession to the robbery.

After his release from prison,

Perez was interviewed on television in 1993.

Within two years he was shot dead

trying to rob a hardware store.

As for Gordon, he died in 1988.

And if he was responsible, he took to the grave his motives

and who ultimately stood to gain.

I link this robbery with the infighting

in the military junta

between two groups that want to be president

and need money for make that possible.

So I believe that is the reason,

because they rob the museum

and try to sell the pictures abroad and fail.

So eight years after the robbery,

the pictures were still missing

and the only suspect was dead.

The trail had run cold.

(dramatic orchestral music)

But in 2001, there was a sudden breakthrough

6,000 miles away

in one of the art-dealing capitals of the world, London.

At the city's heart is the famous auction house Sotheby's.

It's no stranger to dealing with unusual customers

from all over the world.

Today was no exception.

At around 11 a.m. the doors opened

to welcome a blond-haired Texan woman.

She introduced herself as Gabriela Williams.

She was a rather extraordinary sight.

She's not very tall.

She had hair down to her waist.

A huge amount of jewelry, and very expansive.

From her handbag she produced 16 photos

of paintings and drawings

by some of the giants of Impressionist art,

Renoir, Cézanne, Gauguin, Matisse, Degas.

She said she represented two linked charities,

her own was based in Texas, called Humana Way International,

and a second charity based in South America,

the De Lavor Trust, which owned the art.

The trust had already put a price tag on the collection,

a staggering $350 million.

But she wanted Sotheby's

to make their own independent valuation.

She said she then intended to take them to a bank

and use them as security for a loan

to raise funds for the charities.

This whole scheme of hypothecation,

which means taking art to a bank

or some other organization who will lend money on it,

was developed as a scheme

in order that they could get hold of some money

before the art was actually sold.

(suspenseful orchestral music)

Sotheby's agreed to give Gabriela Williams

her valuation, but first they needed

to see the pictures in the flesh

to be sure they were the real thing.

Williams then made a surprising revelation.

The collection was in storage

on the other side of the world, in Taiwan.

It emerged that the president

of the South American De Lavor Trust,

a timber merchant called Arthur Lung,

was Taiwanese, and that he'd stored the pictures

in his home country.

Unperturbed, Sotheby's decided to send an expert

from their Hong Kong office

along with their representative in Taiwan.

Gabriela Williams also flew out,

and completing the gathering was Arthur Lung himself.

They were taken by a confusing route to a warehouse,

which also had some form of office in it,

and these drawings and pictures were laid out in a drawer.

The pictures were brought out

for the Sotheby's staff to inspect,

and they started to take photos for their records.

But when they came to the loose canvases

no longer pegged out on their wooden stretchers,

they realized this was no ordinary viewing.

(camera shutter clicking)

They weren't framed.

They weren't on display.

They were clearly being concealed.

But the collection was a goldmine.

There were three small oil paintings by Renoir,

all less than 50 centimeters across.

Two Cézanne watercolors on paper,

including one trademark still life.

Two Degas sketches of the familiar ballerinas.

A Tahitian scene by Gauguin.

A line drawing by Matisse.

And watercolors by the sculptor Rodin.

The Sotheby's staff confirmed that the works were genuine

and added a price tag of over $4 million,

a lot less than the charities' own estimate

of $350 million.

As a routine precaution,

Sotheby's in London then contacted Julian Radcliffe

at the Art Loss Register,

a business set up to allow the art trade

to check whether works put up for sale are legitimate.

We register about 10,000 stolen items a year,

and we have on our database about 180,000 stolen items.

And we check over 300,000 items being sold every year,

and we match about three a week.

So we have at any one time

well over 150 negotiations under way.

When the call came in from Sotheby's

with details of the 16 pictures in Taiwan,

staff at the Art Loss Register

began checking the descriptions

against the list of missing artwork on their database.

Their searches soon produced a number of close similarities

with an entire collection listed as stolen.

The alarm bells began to ring.

Our staff immediately realized

that they had been registered with us, after the theft,

by the Argentinean museum,

and we were able to make a very simple match

because they were all together.

And we then immediately contacted the police--

I think we've got a match here.

The museum in Argentina--

Yes, for the Renoir.

And we also, obviously, notified Sotheby's.

(dramatic orchestral music)

In Argentina, the National Museum of Fine Arts

in Buenos Aires were amazed

to discover that their missing paintings

had turned up in Taiwan.

(speaking foreign language)

The director of the museum at the time,

Jorge Glusberg, received the news with some surprise

because this theft was considered to be

one of the robberies of the century.

So he took things slowly and sought advice

from his superiors and from lawyers

as to the next steps to follow.

(speaking foreign language)

I was very excited because

to recover that loot

was a great thing for the country.

(light acoustic guitar music)

The pictures had finally emerged

after 20 years in the shadows.

It was crucial to seize the moment

before they disappeared from view once again.

Top of Radcliffe's list was a meeting with the Texan woman

who had set the ball

rolling in Sotheby's, Gabriela Williams.

Two weeks and a few phone calls later,

Radcliffe located her in Spain, where she was on holiday.

She agreed to talk,

and Radcliffe jumped on the next plane out of London.

Gabriela Williams revealed

how her involvement with the paintings began,

and even handed over documents to back it up.

But she insisted she had acted in good faith.

Her explanation was

that she was trying to raise money for charitable purposes.

And she said that she'd been contacted

by a number of people in the States

who had been asked to help hypothecate

or raise money from these pictures.

(dramatic orchestral music)

It was a complicated chain of introductions,

but at the end of the line was Arthur Lung,

president of the obscure charity,

the De Lavor Trust,

based in the small South American country of Suriname.

Lung was looking for a partner to front a bid

to raise money from the pictures.

Williams, it was said,

was looking for funds for her charity.

There is no evidence to suggest

that Gabriela Williams acted other than in good faith.

By March 2001,

Williams and Lung had a deal signing a series of agreements

appointing each other to the boards of their two charities.

A month later she was in London

for her meeting at Sotheby's,

armed with a set of documents provided by Lung

in which a series of apparently eminent individuals

endorsed the collection as legitimate.

Suriname and Arthur Lung were Radcliffe's next targets.

I contacted Arthur Lung in Suriname

and explained to him that the pictures were stolen

and that I wanted to go to Taiwan

in order to arrange for their surrender.

I explained that they would never be able to sell them

and that if they did not cooperate in their surrender,

then we might well be able to

get the police interested in their travel activities.

And I knew that Arthur Lung had a house in Los Angeles,

so I knew that he would not want to have any question

about his passport.

He then told me that his brother would like

to see me in Taiwan

and gave me every indication

that the pictures would be surrendered.

(dramatic orchestral music)

Negotiations then began

to visit Arthur Lung's brother, Yunhuei Lung,

the keeper of the pictures in Taiwan.

In January 2002, after a series of delays,

he finally agreed to a meeting in the capital, Taipei.

Radcliffe set off from London,

optimistic about the fate of the pictures.

(dramatic orchestral music)

In January 2002,

Julian Radcliffe arrived in Taiwan to deal with the man

who apparently had possession of the paintings

stolen from the fine-art museum in Buenos Aries

more than 20 years earlier.

Julian Radcliffe met Yunhuei Lung

in the lobby of his hotel in Taipei.

When I was in Taiwan,

it was clear that Lung was really after money.

He was very truculent.

He said that the West had raided the civilization in China,

which is true, and looted a lot

of Chinese national treasures

which are now all over Western Europe museums,

and, therefore, why should they surrender these pictures?

And he pretended that he had bought them in good faith.

He wouldn't provide any evidence

that he had bought them in good faith,

so I knew he hadn't.

Radcliffe returned empty-handed.

But he felt his trip had not been a complete failure.

During their conversation,

Lung had let slip a piece of information

which Radcliffe felt could unlock

one of the darkest mysteries of the case,

the strange connection between Argentina and Taiwan.

I asked him what would encourage him

to surrender the pictures

besides a payment, which we didn't want to make.

He said that if he was told by the government of Taiwan

to surrender the pictures, then he would do so.

I then asked him which ministry he was referring to,

and he said the Ministry of Defense.

(suspenseful orchestral music)

The military connection

made a fascinating tie-in

with one of the early rumors back in Buenos Aires.

(footsteps thudding)

It might explain the car seen outside the museum.

And it might suggest that the Argentine secret service

had originally been involved in the theft of the paintings.

At that time when the robbery happen,

the links between Taiwan and Argentina were quite intense.

I don't know why the robberies went there to Taiwan,

but usually the link between the Taiwanese officials

and the Argentinean officials

were very intense at that period.

There was a possible basis

for this intense relationship.

Argentina needed arms

at the time of an international arms

embargo against the junta.

Argentina was under a military embargo

during the military times,

especially from the United States and from Europe,

and they don't have any possibility

to buy arms anywhere.

So they used Taiwan a lot as a triangulation for arms, okay?

So the arms went generally to Taiwan,

and then Taiwan can sell to Argentina.

(air horn blowing)

Radcliffe soon had his own theory.

Perhaps the paintings found their way to Taiwan

as payment for an arms deal.

I wondered whether some of the arms

might then have been sold on for the Falklands War

when Argentina was finding it very difficult

to obtain weapons,

and Taiwan was not abiding by the United Nations sanctions.

I don't think anybody is saying

that there was a predetermined theft to supply arms.

But what one suspected was

that the Argentinean military junta,

who continued to control these pictures

some years after the theft, we believe,

may have decided to use them to try and get arms

when they needed foreign exchange to do so.

I think it's a very good adventure to tell,

but I don't know if it's true or not.

Whatever the truth of these theories,

the fact was that the 16 valuable paintings

were still under lock and key in the Lungs' vault in Taiwan.

(dramatic orchestral music)

But then, four months later,

another city was added to the growing list of locations

embroiled in the case.

Paris, where Mercedes Santamarina

had bought the pictures originally,

now became the setting for a dramatic new development.

On May 15, 2002, a Taiwanese businessman

walked into one of the many art galleries

located in St. Germain, the artistic quarter of Paris.

The gallery's owner, Pascal Lansberg,

recognized him at once.

I know this man since the '90s

because he used to buy some Chinese paintings from me

in the middle of the '90s.

He always mention that his uncle

have a collection of Impressionist painting in Taiwan

and called me and asking me

if I can make some estimation for those paintings

because this uncle was ready to sell a few of them.

That day, Pascal Lansberg's client

arrived with a portfolio

containing three items from his uncle's collection,

Renoir's oil painting

"Head of a Young Girl with a Blue Ribbon",

Gauguin's drawing "The Call"

and Cézanne's watercolor "The Road."

Unknown to Lansberg,

all three were from the stolen collection

now in the hands of the Lung brothers in Taipei.

I was surprised

not for the drawing and the water paper,

but I was surprised for the painting.

He come with the painting without any frame, without,

just canvas, you know?

And this make me feel a little bit strange,

but I don't mention anything to him.

I make a receipt.

I keep the painting with me.

The man trying to sell the paintings

was Yeh Yeo-Hwang,

a Taiwanese concert promoter.

Perhaps he deliberately chose the small gallery

believing that it would not have the resources

to run a check.

If so, it was a major miscalculation.

I start to make my research.

And the Renoir I knew.

I saw it in the catalog.

But for the Cézanne, I don't have the book

to check all the aquarelle.

As well for the Gauguin, I didn't know anything.

I have a close friend of mine who is Phillipe Cazeau,

who is specialist in Impressionist

and modern painting,

so asking him to check if he can find something.

And one day he called me to say,

"Pascal, something's strange

"because this drawing is supposed to be in the museum.

"So it's a fake one or it's stolen.

"Something wrong with this drawing.

"It cannot be the one of the museum."

(phone ringing)

Lansberg's friend advised him

to contact the Art Loss Register in London

to double-check that the Gauguin was not stolen.

(suspenseful orchestral music)

And immediately, one hour after,

I receive a call, the boss of the company.

He say, "Okay, I come tomorrow.

"I have a big problem.

"I have to talk to you.

"I come immediately.

"Tomorrow I am here."

These three pictures

were three of the more valuable pictures

out of those stolen from Argentina,

and we informed the French art dealer

that they were stolen.

Radcliffe also told Lansberg his own theory

about the stolen paintings being somehow tied up

in a clandestine arms deal.

At this moment I start to feel a little bit scared

because he's asking me to keep the painting.

And I say, well, please bring me some police.

I don't want, you tell me about seller of weapon.

I don't want to be killed to keep those paintings.

You must find something official

to not authorize me to give back

because I don't want anything dangerous for me.

(dramatic orchestral music)

Radcliffe alerted the French authorities

and then asked Lansberg to arrange for him

to meet Mr. Hwang in person at the gallery.

I was shown upstairs and met the Taiwanese individual

who had brought the paintings in for sale.

The owner of Art Loss Register came,

and he show his passport,

and he say, "I'm Mr. Julian Radcliffe.

"I'm the boss of this company.

"And can you show me your passport?"

Client say, "No, I don't have to show you anything."

He became very nervous and angry

and jumped up and down.

He said that it was outrageous

that we were going to seize the pictures

and that the pictures weren't stolen,

and he tried the same arguments which Mr. Lung

had used on me,

that they had been bought legitimately by Mr. Lung,

even though no evidence was ever provided.

My client was not scared at all.

He said, "I don't know.

"We have everything.

"We own the painting."

He don't feel any scared.

He call his uncle in Taiwan.

They talk in Chinese together.

And I explain to him

that I cannot give back the painting like this

because the police will be involved,

the court will be involved.

So my client accept.

He say, "Okay.

"Wait.

"We know that we own the painting.

"We have the proof.

"It's okay."

Pascal Lansberg was then asked

by the French courts

to hold on to the three pictures

while legal proceedings got under way.

I have it in storage.

There was the piece together in a carton,

and I feel scared a few time because this very small carton

was in my reserve.

We always move, we always,

and sometimes I say, where are those paintings?

(laughing)

(upbeat orchestral music)

Meanwhile, contact was made

with the museum in Buenos Aires to give them the good news.

(speaking foreign language)

We were asked to urgently send to Paris

the documents proving the museum's ownership

of these paintings.

I took part in preparing all the documentation,

the deed of transfer

for the donation of these paintings to the museum

by Mercedes Santamarina.

This was presented immediately to the court.

Now based in Paris,

Argentinean journalist Maria Laura Avignolo

had also received a tip-off

about the discovery of the paintings.

The Argentinean ambassador in Paris,

Archibaldo Lanús, called me one day

and tell me that we have to have tea

because he have a great story to tell me.

The paintings, the Impressionist,

come up, apparently, in Taiwan.

Archie, as we call him, love art,

was a great ambassador here,

and he love culture, and everybody know that.

So I make an agreement with him saying

that I will not publish

if he was telling me, step by step, what we were doing.

(speaking foreign language)

It was a detective's role

that was the fun part of it

between Radcliffe, who is a well-informed man

with loads of personality,

and this mystery owner who never showed up.

It made an entertaining affair.

Back at the embassy, we don't really handle cases like this.

(light acoustic guitar music)

Ownership of the three paintings

would now be left to the courts.

Meanwhile, Julian Radcliffe embarked on a bold bid

to lure the rest of the collection to Paris.

He installed himself in a hotel

in a quiet side street of central Paris,

then invited Hwang to meet him.

Our strategy was to say to the Taiwanese man

in Paris, Yeh Yeo-Hwang,

that he should bring all the other pictures

from Taiwan to Paris

and surrender all of them to the Argentinean government.

And one of the points of pressure we brought on him

was to point out that he'd smuggled

three pictures into Paris

and that the French authorities wouldn't like that,

but if he brought all the others in,

then they might be prepared to accept

that he had done something technically wrong

but not pursue it.

When Hwang was negotiating with us,

it was clear that they wanted cash

if they were going to surrender the pictures.

We had to make them understand that there was no way

in which we were prepared to pay any money to them

for the surrender of the pictures

unless they gave us the full intelligence

about how they'd obtained them.

They were not prepared to do that because they knew

that if they gave us that information,

it would show that they had no title

to the pictures whatsoever.

The negotiations were in deadlock,

and both sides handed it over to their lawyers.

Radcliffe met with the French lawyer

representing the Taiwanese.

He was increasingly confident

of recovering the remaining pictures.

He was a sophisticated operator,

and we thought that he was a man of the world

who would be able to persuade the Taiwanese to do a deal

and surrender the pictures.

But fate had a last bizarre twist in store

for the ill-starred Santamarina collection.

Radcliffe might have thought

he was getting nearer to the stolen paintings.

But the French lawyer

in whom Radcliffe seemed to be investing so much hope

turned out to not be quite what he seemed.

(speaking foreign language)

One day we went to a meeting

to negotiate a final settlement

and get the paintings back, and he just didn't show up.

And then we learned

he had been arrested for some issue in Africa.

He become involved in some African dealing

with diamonds and gold, and they put him in jail.

And Mr. Hwang went back to Taiwan,

and we had nobody who we could negotiate with.

And although the pictures had been seized by the court,

they weren't prepared to actually

hand them over to the Argentineans

until they'd had some contact with the Taiwanese.

For three years,

the whole process once again ground to a standstill.

The 13 pictures in Taiwan had again slipped out of reach,

and even the three in Paris were tied up in legal red tape.

(upbeat guitar music)

In desperation, Julian Radcliffe tried to speed things up,

bypassing the whole legal process.

One day Mr. Radcliffe called me

and said that the ambassador of Argentina will be in Paris.

He tried to push me to give back those paintings.

I don't understand because

I said, I have a responsibility to keep the paintings.

I don't have any order from the court, from the police.

I have to keep them.

He never called me back.

Never.

I realize that his job is to recover paintings stolen

and to get commission.

He work like a bounty hunter.

So Lansberg refused to hand over the paintings

until the legal go-ahead was given.

But it was six months before a decision seemed imminent.

(upbeat guitar music)

Only then did the authorities in Argentina

at last snap into action.

They appointed to the case a prominent investigating judge

to go to Europe to get the paintings back.

With him went an agent from Interpol Argentina,

Marcelo El Haibe,

and on behalf of the Ministry of Culture,

Americo Castilla, now director of the Museum of Fine Arts

in Buenos Aires.

In November 2005,

the three men flew to Paris to recover the pictures

which still languished in the safe room

at the Darga & Lansberg Galerie.

A hearing was convened

in the grandiose surroundings

of the French police headquarters

in the center of Paris,

and Radcliffe was summoned to appear

before the Argentinean judge.

The judge sat at the end of the table

with a set of black gloves in front of him, dark glasses,

looking somewhat strange, if not menacing.

He was impressed by the end

of the question-and-answer session

that we were able to give

very full and detailed accounts of what had happened.

We had nine volumes of files that I took to Paris

so that we could check all the facts

so that the French authorities

and the Argentineans were confident

that the pictures could be handed over with no problem.

The police said to me,

"Now we will give back the paintings to the museum."

So they came in the gallery to take the painting,

and they do it legally, yeah.

On November 14, 2005,

the three pictures were handed over

to the Argentine delegation in Paris.

(dramatic orchestral music)

Within days, the paintings were on their way back home,

protected by the man from Argentine Interpol.

(speaking foreign language)

The paintings traveled back in our hands,

me, the judge, and the secretary,

passing them around depending on the situation.

But we never left them alone,

and we never let them out of our sight,

so that we didn't lose them again.

Finally, nearly a quarter of a century

after the original theft,

the pictures arrived back inside

the Museum of Fine Arts in Buenos Aires.

(audience applauding)

A ceremony was held to welcome the long-lost paintings home.

(audience applauding)

Despite the long absence,

the staff searched the stores

to see if the original frames could still be found.

So here's the three pieces we recovered last year.

There's a Gauguin, a Renoir, and a Cézanne.

Personnel from this museum kept the frames,

as if waiting for them to come back.

That frame which says Gauguin,

and the name of the painting is "The Call."

I like to imagine it was called by the museum to come back.

(light orchestral music)

Same thing with the Cézanne.

But those two are the original frames that came

with the donation from the Santamarina family.

The only frame which wasn't found was the Renoir.

We were not notified, nothing.

We heard about it just in the paper.

We were very happy with this.

Very happy.

In particular I was very happy

with the recovery of the Renoir.

It was very nice.

I feel proud.

I feel finally, you know, it was nice to be Argentinean

and to be part of an operation

that were recovering something

that is part of our history.

To have recovered these three

is like a symbol of the importance of our museum

and our care for what we have.

A great joy.

But despite all the fanfare,

the fate of the 13 missing paintings is still unclear.

Among them, rare works by Matisse, Cézanne,

Renoir, and Degas.

Will they ever be found?

I don't believe that the government will recover

more paintings because they will have to pay,

and they are not interested.

So I believe that the robbery of the Impressionists

reflects of a country with instability

because they'd been robbed during the dirty war,

nobody looked for them.

And now, with the democracy,

nobody is interested in them anymore.

There are three there,

and nobody remember the other ones that are still in Taiwan.

The other 13 are somewhere,

probably under the control, directly or indirectly,

of the Taiwanese.

One day they may try to sell them,

and that's probably when we find them.

(dramatic orchestral music)

(dramatic orchestral music)