Lisbon, July 18, 2025 (Lusa) - An international operation led by the Italian police announced on Friday that it has recovered 104 fake works of art for sale on the market, including a Picasso that the Portuguese Judicial Police (PJ) seized at an auction house last year.
According to information provided by the PJ (the country's main criminal investigation agency) to Lusa, the fake Picasso painting was for sale at an auction house in Portugal and was seized and handed over to the Italian authorities.
According to the EFE news agency, the international operation that recovered 104 fake works of art involved 14 countries, including Portugal, Spain and the United Kingdom, with fakes by Pablo Picasso, Edvard Munch and Paul Klee being recovered.
Operation “Minotauro bis” began in 2022 and led to the recovery of several works that were sold as originals and then sent to various parts of the world, especially the United States, according to the Carabinieri, the Italian military police.
“The operation also made it possible to remove works from the market which, if they had not been identified and blocked in time, would have fetched figures identical to the originals,” said the Italian police, adding that if they had been sold, they would have caused a loss of approximately €1 million to the buyers.
During the operation, the investigating judge ordered the seizure of five bank accounts and two cars, worth approximately €300,000.
The Rome Attorney General’s Office, in coordination with Eurojust, issued 13 European investigation orders and nine requests for judicial assistance in countries within and outside the European Union, including Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Norway, Portugal, the United Kingdom, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United States.
According to EFE, sheets of paper with the watermarks ‘Vollard’ (contemporary art dealer) and ‘Picasso’ (Spanish painter) were used for the forgery. Then, using a graphic design programme, the images of the real works were digitised and an expert created the templates for printing.
These templates, together with the counterfeit paper, were used to make the copies.
To make them look authentic, the paper was artificially aged with coffee and tea baths, and then the artists’ signatures were forged.
Once finished, the forgeries were sent to foreign auction houses with fake certificates of free circulation to mislead any checks and validate their authenticity.
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