MIAMI (AFP) — A French citizen living in Florida was indicted Friday for attempting to sell four paintings, including one by impressionist Claude Monet, that were stolen in southern France in 2007, federal prosecutors here said.
Bernard Jean Ternus, 55 and a resident of Cooper City, a suburb of Miami, was arrested after trying to sell the art to undercover French police and FBI agents.
The four art works were robbed in a brazen afternoon heist from the Beaux-Arts Jules Cheret museum in Nice, southern France, in early August 2007.
The oil paintings include "Falaises pres de Dieppe," (Cliffs near Dieppe) painted by Monet in 1897 and Alfred Sisley's "Allee de peupliers de Moret" (The Lane of Poplars at Moret) dating back to 1980.
The two stolen works of Jan Breugel, a Flemish Baroque era painter who lived between 1568 and 1625, were "Allegorie de l'eau" (Allegory of Water) and "Allegorie de la terre" (Allegory of Earth).
Ternus is charged with "conspiring to transport in interstate and foreign commerce four stolen paintings, knowing that they were stolen," the office of the US attorney for the Southern District of Florida said in a statement.
Ternus was already under arrest on charges of fraud and improper visa use, for which he faces a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison and a 250,000 dollar fine. He has pleaded not guilty to the charges, according to court documents.
According to the new indictment, Ternus and his accomplices in France spent 10 months negotiating the sale of the stolen art with the undercover agents.
"In January of 2008, Ternus and a co-conspirator traveled to Barcelona, Spain, where they negotiated with FBI undercover agents for the sale of the stolen paintings," the statement reads.
"Ternus' co-conspirators also traveled to Miami, in April 2008, to meet with Ternus and the FBI undercover agents to negotiate the terms and structure of the sale of the stolen paintings."
In May one of the co-conspirators showed two of the stolen paintings to the undercover French National Police officer.
The undercover officer "agreed to purchase the stolen paintings on behalf of the undercover FBI agents," and when the final transaction was to occur on June 4, French police "arrested Ternus' co-conspirators in southern France and located and recovered all four stolen paintings in Marseilles, France," the statement reads.
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