Italian police have recovered three paintings worth more than $10 million that were stolen several months ago. The chief of police in Parma, Andrea Pagliaro, told AFP on Friday that nine Moldovans were being investigated in connection with the theft, with five believed to have carried out the burglary.

The artworks were taken from the Fondazione Magnani Rocca museum near the northern city of Parma in late March in an operation lasting less than three minutes. Italy's domestic police force, the Carabinieri, and its cultural heritage protection unit announced on Friday that paintings by Paul Cezanne, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Henri Matisse had been retrieved from an apartment in Parma.

The paintings are more than a century old, and police suspect an organized gang was behind the theft. The heist, footage of which police released on Friday, occurred on March 22. In the video, two masked burglars can be seen entering the museum through a window, taking the paintings off the wall, and handing them to an accomplice waiting outside. An alarm was triggered during the robbery.

Separately, authorities in Brazil said late Thursday that they have recovered artworks by one of the same artists, Matisse. The paintings, estimated to be worth around $200,000, have now been returned to the library from which they were stolen in December. The paintings were discovered at a property in Sao Bernardo do Campo, where a man was arrested.

Source: www.aljazeera.com