The incredible art trafficking affair recounted in “Sensitive Affairs” on January 12, 2025 begins in 1984, with a resounding theft in a museum in Burgundy. Of inestimable value, five paintings by the painter Camille Corot are at the heart of a global treasure hunt. In this extract, the young French commissioner in charge of the investigation will put Japan at its feet…
On November 8, 1987, a team of French police officers flew to Tokyo. They are on the trail of five paintings by the painter Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot, the father of the impressionist movement. The theft of these priceless paintings, right in the municipal museum of Semur-en-Auxois, caused a lot of noise, and the media were on board. They are passionate about these lost masterpieces… and especially for Commissioner Ballestrazzi, who leads the delegation.
The television news makes this “superwoman” 33 year old Vaucluse woman “the number one attraction” of the moment – in front of the singer Madonna, a big star of the 1980s. As soon as she sets foot on Japanese soil, the entire country is captivated.
Mireille Ballestrazzi does not lose sight of her mission: to get her hands back on the paintings. Print, rising sun is still not found, but the Corots have been located. The gang of robbers from the Paris suburbs suspected of the theft would have acted on orders from the Japanese mafia, a master in trafficking works of art from the West. The paintings were in any case resold without incident in Japan, to various museums and galleries. The Young man with a cap was thus purchased for 800,000 francs. A museum in Osaka, the country’s third city, paid the same amount for the Dusk.
Two years have passed since the Corot disappeared from the Semur-en-Auxois museum, and according to Japanese law, nothing obliges a buyer in good faith to return stolen property after this time. Mireille Ballestrazzi will therefore have to negotiate to persuade their new owners to return the paintings, and deal with local customs and customs.
The new darling of Japan will thus submit to a little staging, as a lawyer from Osaka recounts in this extract. In 1987, Kawata Tsuyoshi defended the gallery owner who purchased the Young man with a cap. It had cost him “8,300,000 yen, the equivalent today of 50,000 euros. He was completely unaware that the work had been stolen.” says the lawyer. For his client, this affair was not a question of money, but of honor. To the point of giving up some 8 million yen to solemnly hand over the Corot painting to Mireille Ballestrazzi, during an official ceremony organized at the Nikko Hotel in Osaka.
The commissioner’s tact worked wonders. She managed to convince the Japanese to return four Corots out of the five stolen. As a bonus, the local police even gave him their mascot. The media echo this “complete success for Mireille Ballestrazzi and the French police officers”, who accomplished this delicate mission in two short weeks… and brought back to France four paintings by Camille Corot.
Excerpt from “The gang of impressionists”, to be seen on January 12, 2025 in “Affaires Sensitives”, a France Télévisions, France Inter and INA co-production, adapted from a France Inter program.
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