A Romanian man who has admitted to stealing masterpieces by Gauguin, Monet and Picasso today threatened to sue the Dutch museum he took them from for making his robbery too easy.
Radu Dogaru is among six Romanians on trial for last year's spectacular three-minute heist from the Kunsthal museum in Rotterdam which stunned the art world.
Despite their 18-million-euro estimated value, none of the paintings that belonged to the Triton Foundation was equipped with an alarm, Dutch authorities said.
"I could not imagine that a museum would exhibit such valuable works with so little security", Dogaru told the court today.
"We can clearly speak of negligence with serious consequences", defence lawyer Catalin Dancu told journalists.
"If we do not receive answers about who is guilty" for the failure of the security system at the museum, "we are considering hiring Dutch lawyers to start a legal case in The Netherlands or in Romania."
The lawyer explained that, if found guilty of negligence, the Kunsthal "would have to share the burden of compensation" with his client, who faces millions in claims from insurers.
Among the paintings carried away in burlap sacks in the pre-dawn heist on October 16, 2012 were Pablo Picasso's "Tete d'Arlequin", Claude Monet's "Waterloo Bridge" and "Femme Devant une Fenetre Ouverte, dite La Fiancee" by Paul Gauguin.
The missing paintings had been feared destroyed after Dogaru's mother said she had torched them in her stove in the sleepy Romanian village of Carcaliu in a bid to destroy evidence against her son.
Olga Dogaru later retracted her statement but experts from Romania's National History Museum said ashes retrieved from her stove included the remains of three oil paintings and nails from frames used before the end of the 19th century.
"The paintings were certainly not destroyed. I don't know where they are but I believe they have been sold", Radu Dogaru told the judge today, in his first public statement on the matter.
Asked about the nails found in his mother's stove, he claimed his family had owned 19th icons.
Last month, the director of Romania's National History Museum said the nails could not come from icons.
Dogaru's lawyer has in recent months made contradictory statements about the fate of the masterpieces, saying his client could give back five of them, without providing evidence, later alleging that they might be in Moldova.
A separate investigation into the possible destruction of the artwork is pending.
