Police Recover Costliest Art Haul

Police have recovered 258 artworks, some by Dufy, Picasso, Buffet, Van Dongen and Cézanne, stolen in the most expensive art robbery ever in France.

The police seized the works in a small van on the Avenue Georges V in central Paris on Monday, a spokesman said yesterday. They were taken 18 months ago from one of France's finest private collections, in a particularly violent robbery by up to a dozen intruders at a stately home near Reims.

Three men were arrested with the van, and are due in court today. Two kilos of cocaine and several handguns were also seized. A police spokesman said two of the men were thought to be leaders of the Paris gang that stole the artworks, known as the H Gang.

"Obviously we are delighted to have recovered these works," he said.

"But we're just as pleased with the fact that we appear to have smashed a very violent and dangerous band of criminals that we believe are to blame for several major armed robberies over the last few years."

The H Gang's stock-in-trade was armed motorway hold-ups of luxury cars. It is also thought to have carried out a daring robbery in Fontainebleau in August last year, when jewels worth nearly £700,000 were stolen in mid-sale from an auction house.

The artworks are being held in a safe at the headquarters of the organised crime squad in Nanterre, and are described as "literally priceless".

Before the theft, they were stored in a vault on the Lévy family estate at Bréviandes, in the Champagne country east of Paris. The family and their household staff - 17 people in all - were beaten and threatened with death, then left tied and gagged for several hours. Two children had shotguns put in their mouths. A woman was later taken to hospital.

The family is heir to some valuable clothing brands, including Lacoste sportswear, and for generations had been patronising artists, notably the Impressionists. When Pierre Lévy died some months before the robbery, he left much of his extraordinary collection to the state, but a large part remained stored in a vault on the family estate. The well-informed thieves took the lot.