The Belgian police announced that two paintings by Marc Chagall and Pablo Picasso, worth approximately $900,000, stolen 14 years ago from the home of Israeli art collector Jacqueline Herzikovich in Tel Aviv, were found in the basement of a house in Antwerp, An Israeli luxury watch dealer was arrested on suspicion he was involved in the theft.
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The two works of art, a portrait by Picasso known as "The Head" and a painting by Chagall called "The Praying Jew", were stolen in 2010 from the Herzikovich family villa in Tel Aviv. The works were stolen along with jewelry worth about $680,000.
In 2022, after more than a decade of searches, the Belgian police reached a breakthrough, when they received a report of an art dealer who was offering the two paintings for sale in the city of Namur, located in the Wallonia region of Belgium. For months, the police followed the suspect, a 68-year-old Israeli luxury watch dealer known as Daniel, but in a raid on his house last week, the police found a large sum of money without a trace of the two paintings.
During his interrogation, the suspect admitted that he had the paintings, but refused to reveal to investigators where he had hidden them. The police expanded the search to Antwerp, where the works were eventually found.