Stolen Picasso Recovered in Paris Drug Raid, Police Say It Could Be Worth Tens of Millions
French police recovered an authenticated Pablo Picasso painting during a drug trafficking raid on June 15 in Champigny-sur-Marne, in the southeastern suburbs of Paris, adding an art-crime twist to an already sprawling criminal case. The work has not been publicly named, but investigators say it belongs to Picasso’s portraits of Marie-Thérèse Walter, the artist’s model and lover in the 1920s and 1930s.
Alliance Police Nationale, a French police union, told Le Parisien that the painting was worth “tens of millions of euros” and belonged to a woman from Singapore. The discovery came during a search of a property linked to a suspected drug dealer. Along with the painting, officers seized nearly 40 pounds of cannabis, €7,000 in cash, and €200,000 worth of luxury clothing.
Six people were arrested in the raid, including a 37-year-old man who worked as a security guard at a Paris firm specializing in storing art and other valuables. French media reports say he admitted taking the Picasso from the depot, though he claimed he did so to expose weaknesses in the company’s security. Two of the initial suspects were released, while four others appeared at a court hearing on June 19. The trial is expected in August.
The case fits a familiar pattern. Picasso works have long been magnets for theft, and recent years have brought a string of recoveries and prosecutions. In 2018, another portrait of Walter from the period, “Woman in Beret and Checkered Dress” (1937), sold at Sotheby’s London for £49.8 million, or about $83 million with inflation. In 2024, Belgian police found Picasso’s “Tête” (1970) in an Antwerp basement after it had been stolen from a home in Tel Aviv a decade earlier.
For collectors, museums, and insurers alike, the recovery is a reminder that Picasso’s market value is matched by the persistence of the criminal trade that shadows it.
