Spanish customs officers seized a drawing by Picasso, worth 450,000 euros, which entered the country smuggled.
A drawing attributed to Picasso, worth 450,000 euros, was seized in early July at Ibiza airport, in the Balearic Islands, in the suitcase of a traveler suspected of “smuggling”, customs announced on Monday Spanish.
The design, baptized three charactersand dated 1966, was discovered on July 5 in the possession of a traveler from Switzerland “having tried to introduce it into Spain without having declared it”, customs said in a press release.
Questioned by customs officers, who had been warned by their Swiss counterparts of the presence of a “work” transported in “suspicious” conditions, the traveler assured that the drawing was a simple copy and showed an invoice for 1,500 Swiss francs (1,515 euro).
But in the bottom of his suitcase, customs officers discovered a second invoice for 450,000 francs (454,000 euros), from an art gallery in Zurich, with a reference to the drawing three characters by Pablo Picasso.
According to a preliminary expertise carried out by heritage specialists, it is “the original work” of the Spanish painter and “the price invoiced by the gallery is in line with the market price”, underlines the press release.
This first report will have to be confirmed by a “more exhaustive expertise”, with the use of “state-of-the-art techniques”, add the customs, which specify that they have opened an investigation for acts of “smuggling”, entrusted to an investigating judge. .