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Tuesday, October 09, 2012

Gardner Art Heist, FBI Fishing, D.A. Dangles Drugs Plea Deal

 

Conn. drug suspect linked to Gardner heist may cop plea

Gentile Manchester Home

  http://www.bostonherald.com/news/regional/view/20221008conn_drug_suspect_linked_to_gardner_heist_may_cop_plea/srvc=home&position=also

A Connecticut man who told the Herald federal prosecutors offered to broom drug charges against him if he agreed to help solve the 1990 Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum art heist is negotiating a plea deal, according to court documents filed by his attorney.
Andrew Parente, 75, and reputed gangster Robert Gentile, 76, were scheduled to go on trial tomorrow in Hartford on charges they were dealing prescription painkillers. On Friday, Judge Robert N. Chatigny pushed the proceeding back to Nov. 13 after Parente and public defender Deirdre Murray filed a motion to postpone jury selection, stating they are “engaged in negotiations” with prosecutors.
Parente and Murray did not return calls requesting comment. The U.S. Attorney’s Office also did not return calls.


Parente told the Herald in May the FBI started leaning on him about the 13 missing masterpieces by Rembrandt, Vermeer, Degas and Manet soon after he was arrested in February.
A $5 million reward for information leading to the recovery of the art valued at more than $500 million is still up for grabs.




WHDH-TV -

Sunday, October 07, 2012

"Charles Vincent Sabba & Art Hostage, Separated By An Ocean, Joined by Their Desire To Recover The Worlds Most Wanted Stolen Art, Gardner Art, Public Priority Number One"

Only $5 million Reward For $500 million Stolen Masterpieces
Gardner Museum New Wing Costing Over $180 million

"Over the years Art Hostage and Charles Vincent Sabba have developed a close working and personal relationship, whereby they bring all their vast experience from both sides of the law and divide into one concentrated true vision of recovering the worlds most wanted stolen art. Together, joined by the common bond of artistic integrity, this partnership will offer a vision and pathway that see's the worlds most wanted stolen art go home to its rightful place, not least the elusive, Gardner art. Below Charles Sabba offers this first installment of what will prove to be the final part of the journey of the Gardner art on its way back home for the people of Boston, America and all of the world to reconnect with those long lost iconic masterpieces."



Read this paragraph from a news article on the Santa Monica art theft and you see clearly that the meager amount of $5 million reward for the Gardner works is an inadequate sum:


"...Jeffrey Gundlach did not know who, if anybody, would get the reward. He had offered $1 million for the return of a Mondrian painting called "Composition En Rouge Et Blanc."  

The offer is said to be the highest-ever reward for a single painting. That was the painting Gundlach said the thieves had been trying to unload..."

Now, I dig Mondrian, but $1 million for a Mondrian was offered by a guy who loved his collection and only $5 million was offered by a museum for a Vermeer, three Rembrandts, a Manet, a Flinck, drawings by Degas and a Chinese Ku! It is obvious that Gundlach loves his art.

I am not sure why the Gardner puts such a low reward offer out there, especially when they were willing to raise and spend multiple millions, $180 million to be exact,  on the controversial expansion of the museum.

Maybe it is finally time to rethink both the reward and the immunity offers up in Boston. Obviously their game plan has been to wait the bad guys out. Only a small number of men know the whereabouts of the stolen works and they are getting old and more then one of them are in bad health.

After they die, the authorities will put the squeeze on their surviving family members in hopes of gaining their cooperation for info and property searches. 

This is a bad and risky game plan, because when they pass on they may bring their secrets with them for eternity!

If the museum would raise that kind of money or, even only $100 million dollars, to offer as a reward, and a reward value is placed on each individual work, one or two of those works may just get returned swiftly (also necessary is that the passionate realists within the art world would put political pressure on the right people to hammer out a true blanket immunity in which absolutely no one had to testify, one or two of those works may just get returned swiftly).  
Charles Sabba



   

Vermeer's The Concert

Vermeer's The Concert