Following a long and thorough police investigation by German and Israeli authorities, an entire art forgery network in Europe was dismantled last month, resulting in the capture of 24 persons suspected of fraud for performing fake appraisals, expediting fictitious authenticity certificates and money laundering. The gang is accused of being responsible for the forgery and audacious insertion in the official market of, at least, 400 artwork forgeries of well-known artists like the Russians Malevich and Kandinsky.
After a massive raid across dozens of places in Israel, Cyprus, Switzerland and Spain, the network was uncovered and the scam estimated to ascend the 2.6 million euros mark, the amount just two of the forged works were sold for by a well-known German Gallery. More than 1,000 other works were confiscated and their authenticity and origins are still under the process of being established.
Israeli investigative reporter Roni Zinger dug into the case until encountering Yitzhak Zarug, a 66 year-old Israeli art dealer, who lived in the suburbs of Tel Aviv and who was arrested in Germany in June during the aforementioned raid. Authorities were investigating a gang rumored to be in possession of a map used to find a "treasure" that consisted of gold ingots made from gold found in the jewelry of holocaust victims—the gold had presumably been buried during World War II in German territory. German detectives found the group excavating in a site in Munich. But after a brief interrogatory they were let go without pressing charges against them. Nonetheless, Israeli police continued to secretly investigate them until finding Yitzhak Zarig, who was eventually arrested in his Wiesbaden apartment in Germany, where the police confiscated several forged artworks.
During his hunt for fake artworks, Zinger visited several galleries and flea markets in Jaffa and Tel Aviv. The gallery owners had been involved in recent legal proceedings for forgery, among which the case involving a Chagall stood out. According to the Haaretz periodical, Zarug had been involved in every single one of these proceedings. He is said to be a very eloquent and persuasive character, to the point of convincing the people close to him of being a Mossad operative.