A Pablo Picasso drawing worth almost £400,000 has been seized at a Spanish airport.
The passenger, a 64-year-old man from Mexico, tried to smuggle the 1996 sketch, identified as ‘Trois personnages’, claiming it was a fake but he was busted at customs in Ibiza.
Swiss officials initially flagged him as ‘suspicious’ at Zurich airport, alerting their Spanish counterparts who questioned him when he landed.
He told them it was a copy of the original and presented a handwritten invoice of £1,300 for the artwork.
But when they went through his luggage, they found another receipt from a gallery in Zurich for £383,000.
Anyone importing art of a value greater than £125,000 from outside the European Union must pay import duties and VAT, so the man was booked for smuggling.
Picasso’s artwork is currently at the disposal of an Ibiza court, which will oversee the investigation.
An art expert is expected to carry out further analysis of the drawing.
A statement form the Tax Agency and Civil Guard said: ‘The authorities in matters of Cultural Heritage and Fine Arts have considered, in a preliminary way and in the absence of more exhaustive reports, that the work is original and that the price invoiced by the gallery is adjusted to the market price.
‘The action stems from information sent by Swiss Customs to the Permanent Operational Coordination Center of the Customs Department of the Tax Agency about a traveler who, originating in the Swiss country, was on a commercial flight from Zurich to Ibiza carrying a work of art in circumstances that the Swiss authorities considered suspicious.
‘After this information, an operation was arranged, made up of Customs officials from the Tax Agency and Civil Guard agents, to intervene in the work in the event that the traveler tried to introduce it without a declaration, thus removing it from the control of the Spanish customs authorities.’
Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at [email protected].
For more stories like this, check our news page.
Source: Read Full Article