How to find a stolen Van Gogh

Country, country, country, not a country. Does Quebec have some kind of theft-friendly exemption to Canadian law?

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I don’t know about Canada, but laws about theft are generally established at the state here, unless federal property or inter-state “commerce” occur. Think mail theft.

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Or paintings transported from the Netherlands to Canada.

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Does an immoral compass point south?

(Not even going to google to see how many people already came up with that joke or some variation)

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I am displeased with this “How-to” article. I have now attempted to follow the instructions for several hours, and I’ve yet to recover even a single stolen Van Gogh.

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I wondered abkut tye Quebec angle, but then I read a blog entry by someone who writes about crime and it was a story about a stolen piece of artwork (only a few decades ago) that a Quebec court had ruled in favor of the guy in posession of the art, not who had owned it before it disappeared.

But I don’t recall hearing anything like this previoualy. The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts was robbed in 1972, some expensive paintings, and I doubt if they were ever found that the paintings would not be returned to the museum.

And in recent years there were some stories about an art dealer who had lost art to the nazis, and he got them back in recent times. When he died some of that previously stolen artwork was bequeathed to museums. Now, I think the jurisdiction there was elsewhere, but it seems like a good reason to make sure art returns to its owner, no matter how long the wait.

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Also, Quebec has lots of different rules than the rest of Canada, so it’s not a stretch that laws might be different there. One example is that all of Canada has to have bilingual stuff - Quebec does not.

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"October 29, 1964, at New York’s American Museum of Natural History, of 24 precious gems, including the Star of India, the Eagle Diamond and the DeLong Star Ruby.This heist was called the “Jewel Heist of the Century.” It targeted the museum’s J.P. Morgan jewel collection

Murphy had cased the museum earlier and discovered that security was lax to non-existent. The burglar alarm system was non-operational, and the hall’s 19 exterior windows were left open two inches overnight for ventilation The thieves climbed in through the window and discovered that the display case alarms were non-functional as well."

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