Returned to its rightful owner. Turner's Shade and Darkness.
It's a complex saga of stolen masterpieces, underground criminal gangs and secret payments. And now the German police are asking questions about the mysterious chain of events leading to the Tate's recovery of two stolen Turner paintings.
Two years after Shade and Darkness - the Evening of the Deluge and Light and Colour were returned to their rightful owner, the facts remain murky and opinion is split: Was this a clever piece of detective work on behalf of the Tate, or were they setting a dangerous precedent in dealing with the mafia?
The film-like plot started eight years ago when the masterpieces were swiped from Frankfurt's Schirn Kunsthalle gallery where they were on loan from the Tate. Two thieves and their getaway driver were soon convicted for their role in the crime. But the brain behind the plot - thought to be a leading figure in Frankfurt's Balkan mafia - is still on the loose.
As part of its zealous bid to recoup the stolen Turners, the Tate recruited two private detectives and worked with a German lawyer who had clients in the Balkan mafia. They paid €3m (about £2m) for information leading to the recovery of the works.
A spokeswoman for the prosecutors office in Frankfurt told the Guardian that they were investigating who had received the payments from the Tate but refuted allegations that they were probing whether the Tate had acted outside of the law.
That raises a question mark about a report in the Times that the German police were outraged about being left out of the loop during the dialogues with middlemen representing the criminals. Being kept in the dark reportedly hampered their investigations into members of the Serbian underworld thought to have masterminded the theft. The gangsters are believed to be involved in the drugs and arms trade.
This is not the first time that questions have been asked about what happened behind the scene in the six years between the Turners' theft and recovery. In 2005, the BBC broadcast a documentary probing the saga.
As theories swirl, the Tate has insisted it only paid for information and the cost of the investigation. But others see it differently, warning it may spark copycat crimes amid hopes of bonanza payouts. And there's the irony that paying big money for the recovery of stolen goods could line the pockets of the very people who nabbed the paintings in the first place.
