Mohsen Shaalan, head of the Fine Arts Section at the Ministry of Culture, has received a three-year suspended sentence following the theft in August of a Van Gogh painting, estimated to be worth $55 million, from the Mahmoud Khalil Museum, reports Nevine El-Aref Following three months of investigations, 11 officials from the Ministry of Culture were found guilty of gross negligence and professional delinquency, including Shaalan and Reem Baher, the director of the Mahmoud Khalil Museum. The Van Gogh painting known as Poppy Flowers, or Vase with Flowers, was cut from its frame, leaving only the wooden stretchers on display. Early investigation revealed that 36 of the museum's 43 surveillance cameras were broken and none of the alarms attached to paintings were working. Security personnel were absent from the gallery complex during the time of the theft. The Mahmoud Khalil Museum first opened on 23 July 1962. It houses the collection of mostly French art from the 19th and early 20th centuries amassed by Mohamed Mahmoud Khalil Pasha and his wife Emiline Lock. In 1971 the building was requisitioned by the government of president Anwar El-Sadat and was subsequently used as office space, reopening as a museum in 1995. The permanent collection includes works by Paul Gauguin, Gustave Courbet, François Millet, Claude Monet, Edouard Manet, Adolphe Monticelli, Auguste Renoir and Auguste Rodin. After receiving his three-year suspended sentence Shaalan was released on bail of LE10,000. The missing painting has not been recovered, and the thief, or thieves, remain at large.
