Italian authorities said on Tuesday they had achieved a major breakthrough in a sweeping investigation into an extensive forgery network with 38 people across Europe suspected of producing and selling fake artworks attributed to international artists from Banksy to Pablo Picasso and Andy Warhol. The probe, which includes Italy, Spain and France, has so far identified suspects of conspiracy to receive stolen goods, forgery and illegal sale of artworks in Belgium.
The operation was first reported by Reuters and jointly announced in Italy by the Carabinieri art squad and the prosecutor’s office in Pisa. According to chief prosecutor Teresa Angela Camelio of Pisa, experts from the Banksy archive who worked alongside investigators described the operation as “the largest act of protection of Banksy’s work.”
Alongside the fake Banksy pieces, Italian police also discovered forgeries attributing works to various historical and modern art luminaries — Claude Monet, Vincent Van Gogh, Salvador Dali, Marc Chagall, Francis Bacon and Piet Mondrian. Around 2,100 fake pieces worth an estimated €200 million were seized and six forger’s camps raided at locations across Europe, among them two in Tuscany and one in Venice.
The probe was started in 2023 after police seized some 200 fakes including a drawing described as being by Amedeo Modigliani from the collection of a Pisa-based businessman. Following the chain of ownership for these pieces took investigators through a number of Italian auction houses and back to who is believed to be the suppliers for the group.
Suspects are accused of staging two bogus Banksy shows in the nearby Venetian town of Mestre and in the Tuscan town of Cortona with ersatz works to bolster claims that those now being offered were authentic. The takedown of this network represents one of the potentially largest steps taken in preserving the authenticity and integrity behind art attributed to marquee artists.
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