[MSN] Revealed: the stolen art found at home of crime boss Adams

Thu Jun 7 22:22:15 CEST 2007

Revealed: the stolen art found at home of crime boss Adams

· Police found 'Aladdin's cave' of treasures
· Many owners traced after raid on mansion 

Sandra Laville, crime correspondent
Thursday June 7, 2007
The Guardian 

A treasure trove of stolen art and antiques, which was discovered in the £2m
mansion belonging to the London crime boss Terry Adams, can be revealed
today.
When detectives arrested the north London godfather in September 2003 they
found what they later described as an Aladdin's cave of treasures gracing
his home. Most of the property was found to have been stolen from country
houses, art galleries and museums over the last 10-15 years. Many of the
antiques had been packed into cases and were apparently about to be moved
when police arrived.

While Adams was arrested on suspicion of laundering part of his multimillion
crime fortune, officers catalogued the store of art and antiques, removed it
to a warehouse, and called in experts to identify it.
Working with the Art Loss Register and officers from the arts and antiques
squad at Scotland Yard, detectives from the National Crime Squad, which
later became the Serious and Organised Crime Agency, attempted to find where
the property had originally come from. They managed to trace the owners of
£274,000 worth of the stolen art and antiques and yesterday released
pictures of some of the returned items to the Guardian.

Victims of the burglaries included an 85-year-old woman from Sherborne,
Dorset, whose £2,000 Chinese lacquered Davenport writing bureau was stolen
in 1992; a leading London gallery, the Marlborough, which had three Henry
Moore prints and three Picasso etchings worth £35,000 stolen in 1997; the
Library Museum of the Freemasons, which lost five pieces of Meissen
porcelain worth £120,000 in two thefts in 1991 and 1996; and Asprey's
auction house, which lost a pair of Bluejohn Cassolette vases worth £60,000
in 1996.

However, the Sherborne victim, who did not want to be named, has still not
gained possession of her bureau.

She said yesterday: "By the time the police found it, the insurance company
had paid out on it. It is now in their possession and I don't think I can
afford to buy it back, which is a shame."

Hugo Gorst-Williams, of the recovery section of the Art Loss Register, which
holds details of 170,000 items of stolen art and antiques on its database,
said he was called in by police shortly after Adams' arrest in 2003.

"At the time, we did not know the property was found at his house. There was
a major investigation going on and the police kept the information very
close," he said. "They rang us to say they had discovered an Aladdin's cave
and asked for our help. It was only much later we were told the items had
been found in Terry Adams' home."

Detectives sent a list of the items, which were worth more than £500,000 in
all, to experts at the Art Loss Register. "We were able to match up some of
the items very quickly with our database," said Mr Gorst-Williams.

Adams was jailed for seven years in March after pleading guilty to
laundering £1m of his multimillion pound criminal fortune. Adams and his
brothers Tommy and Patsy, who were known as the A-team, ran an empire based
on loan sharking, protection rackets and money laundering through the Hatton
Garden gem district of central London.

The family's financial adviser, Solly Nahome, who arranged for £25m of the
family's criminal income to be hidden in property deals and offshore
accounts, was shot dead outside his home, throwing the family's financial
affairs into chaos.

After decades of cheating justice, Adams was caught after the Inland Revenue
investigated his lavish lifestyle in the mid-1990s. He offered to settle
with them for £95,000 in 1996, but the (now defunct) National Crime Squad
launched a £50m joint investigation with MI5.

A specialist police team spent 21 months bugging Adams' home to provide
evidence that he was living off proceeds of crime while claiming he had a
legitimate income.

The stolen art works were found when officers raided Adams's home in Mill
Hill, north London, in September 2003. In addition, they found £50,000 in
cash in a shoe box in the loft.

Adams was ordered last month to pay £4.7m for legal costs over four years.