Airport handlers accused of €1.4m painting theft
Two airport cargo handlers have been arrested in New York for allegedly stealing a €1.4m painting by a British artist Lucian Freud.
Painter’s Garden was stolen on Tuesday after it arrived at John F Kennedy International Airport on a United Airlines flight from London. The work was being sent to a Manhattan art gallery.
Prosecutors said that before the oil painting could be claimed, cargo handlers Kirt Garvey and Rajmohan Autar took it and hid it in a garage in Queens.
After an airline employee reported the work missing, a review of security tapes showed the men collaborated on the theft, prosecutors said.
The painting, of a tree and shrubs, was recovered on Wednesday.
Garvey, 19, and Autar, 29, were arrested on charges of theft and possession of stolen property. If convicted, each could face up to 25 years in prison, prosecutor Richard Brown said.
Lucian Freud, 80, grandson of psycho-analyst Sigmund Freud, was born in Germany and settled in England in the 1930s.
