Judicial Police
The PJ rescued almost 300 works signed by artists such as Picasso and Miró in Penava do Castelo
The Judiciary Police rescued almost 300 works of art that were in the estate of an octogenarian North American, resident in Penalva do Castelo, who passed away two years ago. His former butler now considered he had a legitimate right to the pieces, valued at millions of euros, and tried to sell them.
The Directorate of the Judiciary Police Center (PJ) seized 278 works of art in a house in Penalva do Castelo, as part of an operation investigating the possible illicit origin of an estate valued at several million euros.
The collection belonged to a North American citizen, octogenarian, died in 2024, who lived for more than a decade at Rua Luís de Camões, 39, in Penalva do Castelo.
According to the PJ, the call “Operation Butler” involved home and non-home searches and culminated in the constitution as defendant from a former butler of the octogenarian, who had the pieces in his possession.
The house, described by investigators as a real museumthere was no “no square meter of wall that was not properly stuffed with beauty and art“, he told the director of the PJ of the Center, Avelino Lima.
The case came to the attention of the authorities when the American’s butler, a Portuguese citizen who would have lived with his boss in Spaintried sell some of the parts after the owner’s death. The alert was given by Museus e Monumentos de Portugal.
Among the seized works were identified works allegedly executed by 27 internationally renowned authors, including Pablo Picasso, Joan MiróDavid Hockney, Albrecht Dürer, Pierre Bonnard and Juan Downey.
The estate is made up of paintings, lithographs, serigraphs, sculptures and objects of archaeological origin, some of which appear to date back to Prehistory and Antiquity.
They are still among the almost 300 sculptures dated between the 1st century BC and the 18th century, as well as artifacts from the Neolithic and Greco-Roman periodscoming from regions such as Persia, the Middle East, Central and South America, Africa, China and Syria.
According to Avelino Lima, the employee “considered himself the legitimate heir of works of art and tried to sell them, imposing immediate action“.
The authorities do not rule out that the Penalva do Castelo collector may have been linked to international criminal networks.
“Considering his nationality and the knowledge we already have of his history here in Europe, it is a possibility that may have acted from the perspective of the money launderer of international organizations”, admitted the head of the PJ. The crimes under investigation are abuse of trust and money laundering.
The accused, however, rejects the suspicions: “What people are saying is a big lie. He has invoices for all purchases and all the paintings are original, but they are not worth as much as they say.”
Os experts from the Machado de Castro National Museumwho accompanied the searches, qualified the works as genuine, but all will be subjected to expert examinations to confirm their value and authenticity. “In a simplistic way, we are always talking worth in the order of millions“, highlighted Avelino Lima.
The investigation is in charge of DIAP in Viseu, and investigations continue. But as every reader of Agatha Christie’s novels knows, when the truth comes out, it’s always the butler’s fault.
