Five years after massive thefts, the Museum of Fabric Printing in Mulhouse recovered, on Monday December 18, 76 Hermès scarves out of the hundreds that were stolen, France Info tells us. The facts date back to 2018. During an investigation carried out jointly by the Mulhouse judicial police and the Central Office for the Fight against Trafficking in Cultural Property (OCBC), the institution’s conservation delegate Jean-François Keller recognized having carried out part of the flights reported France Bleu Alsace. He is then indicted and incarcerated. Released in July 2019, he is today under judicial supervision, again according to France Info. During his interrogation, the conservation officer claimed to have wanted revenge on his superiors. “He saw the museum going down the drain and that despaired him,” explained his lawyer Marc Staedelin, to Le Figaro, in 2019.
Also read: The mystery of the missing fabrics from the Mulhouse Museum
Jean-François Keller was accused of stealing numerous valuable objects belonging to the establishment, including more than two hundred Hermès squares. Without forgetting two Gallé vases, worth 200,000 to 300,000 euros. While he intended to put them up for auction in Paris, at Sotheby’s. It was the company, by wanting to verify the origin of the objects, which contributed to the opening of the investigation.
The pieces are partly resold on eBay, with a PayPal account: “These resales were done through eBay, from person to person,” explains to our colleagues from France Info Hubert Percie du Sert, the boss of the OCBC in charge of the ‘affair. “We found them based on the different buyers who had contacted the thief through eBay. Sometimes one by one. And then, we found some of them in batches. We will probably restore others in light of the research that will continue,” he said.
In addition to the Hermès squares, other pieces, including more than 3,500 sample books of inestimable value, were stolen. A giant inventory of the museum’s collections, launched in 2020, made it possible to find around fifty books, including several on a general public classified ads site.
