February 12, 2008	Tuesday	Safar 04 ,1429

ZURICH, Feb 11: Masked robbers brandishing handguns stole four paintings by 19th Century masters worth $164 million from a Zurich museum in Switzerland’s biggest art theft, police said on Monday.

Oil paintings by Cezanne, Degas, van Gogh and Monet were stolen in broad daylight on Sunday from the private Buehrle Collection in the second dramatic art theft in the area within days.

The robbery in Switzerland’s financial capital followed the theft of two Picasso paintings Tete de Cheval, from 1962, and Verre et Pichet, from 1944 from a nearby cultural centre last week.

Police said they had no concrete leads on the Picasso theft and that the investigation was ongoing. They declined to say whether they thought the two thefts were connected.

In Sunday’s robbery, three men in dark clothing and masks, one of whom spoke German with a Slavic accent, forced their way into the museum and made off with the paintings in a white car, police said.

Police said a reward of 100,000 Swiss francs was on offer for information leading to their arrest.

The four paintings stolen were Cezanne’s The Boy in the Red Vest from 1890, Degas’ Viscount Lepic and His Daughters from 1871, Monet’s Poppies Near Vetheuil from 1880 and Van Gogh’s Blossoming Chestnut Branches from 1890, police said.

Police raised the value of the paintings to 180 million Swiss francs ($164.2 million) after initially saying the paintings were valued at 100 million francs.

The Sunday theft occurred at the impressionist collection amassed by the late Swiss industrialist Emil Buehrle one of the most controversial business figures of his time for selling anti-aircraft guns to Nazi Germany during World War Two.

The Buehrle Collection, positioned near Zurich’s wealthy Gold Coast chain of lakeside suburbs, boasts one of the most important assemblies of French impressionism and post-impressionism, according to its website (www.buehrle.ch).

A spokesman for the collection, housed in a gated villa on the outskirts of Switzerland’s largest city, was not immediately available for comment.—Reuters