National Museum employees tried over painting theft

National Museum employees tried over painting theft

JAKARTA (JP): Two employees of the National Museum were
indicted in the Central Jakarta District Court yesterday for
allegedly stealing 25 priceless paintings, including five works
of the late Basoeki Abdullah and one by Raden Saleh.

State prosecutor Y.W. Mere accused the defendants, Supandi,
41, a resident of Sawangan, West Java and Bambang Widoyono, 38, a
resident of Cengkareng, West Jakarta, of selling the museum's
collections to a Singaporean collector, Michael Lee, who is still
at large.

The defendants, who worked in the museum's conservancy
department, were charged under article 363 of the Penal Code for
conspiring to steal, an offense punishable with up to seven years
imprisonment.

Mere said the theft took place between March and May 1996.

The case came to light in September when five of the stolen
paintings were displayed in a Christie's catalog of paintings to
be auctioned in Singapore in October.

Among the five on display were Basoeki's Ny. Beni Suherman and
Raden's portrait of a Dutch governor wearing the Willems' Order.

Subsequent investigations by police found that 25 collections
in the poorly guarded museum had gone missing. They included
recently restored paintings by French artists Pigasso and H. de
Toulouse.

Police have since managed to retrieve 22 of the stolen
paintings. Five of them were returned by Christie's Singapore,
which withdrew them from the auction after the theft became
known. The other 17 were found in a house in Pondok Indah
believed to have been rented by Lee.

It was later learned that Lee had arranged to have the five
paintings auctioned at Christie's in Singapore.

The fate of the remaining three paintings was not known.

The National Museum has since tightened its security.

The prosecutor said the theft was initiated by Lee who had
known Supandi. Bambang, who had the key to the paintings'
storeroom, was brought into the plan at a later stage.

Lee paid between Rp 3 million and Rp 6 million for each of the
stolen paintings, but he had only made payments for 17 of them
when the scam became known.

Initially, the money was split evenly between Bambang and
Supandi. But later on, Bambang took the larger cuts. In one case,
he took Rp 5 million and gave Supandi Rp 1 million, according to
the dossier.

The trial was adjourned until next week. (12)