Operation Retablo: The hidden treasure a millionaire brought from Marbella to Italy

For fans of the genre, this is a perfect story: a cosmopolitan German multimillionaire couple, a luxurious villa on Lake Maggiore in northwestern Italy, and a highly valuable art collection that the police had been tracking for years. The couple died within days of each other, and it was discovered that the residence contained treasures that shouldn't be there. The story must have also fascinated the Italian Civil Guard and Carabinieri, who dubbed the operation at the mansion Operation Altarpiece, thanks to which they managed to return to Spain 65 of the more than 350 pieces located in Italy, also in the homes of other collectors. On the shores of the lake, there was a very rich but illegal museum with paintings by Picasso, Modigliani, Rodin, and even a 16th-century Flemish altarpiece attributed to the circle of Brueghel the Younger. It was never supposed to leave the Peninsula, but it was brought to Italy, probably aboard a private jet.

At the center of what "seems like a movie script," as Ángeles Albert De León, Director General of Cultural Heritage and Fine Arts at the Ministry of Culture, put it, is Günter Kiss, an eccentric German businessman with a Swiss passport, known in the Italian-Swiss border region for his controversial transactions and extravagant lifestyle. His career oscillated between a passion for art—which he bought all over the world—and an interest in the waste business. He was one of the first to attempt to build incinerator plants to convert garbage into energy, a project that also brought him serious problems with the Italian justice system.

The businessman moved a few pieces despite the Ministry of Culture's ban.

In February 2023, Kiss died, just a week after his wife. They had no children, and a foundation based in Liechtenstein was listed as his heir. A few weeks later, the cultural heritage authority of the city of Novara, in northern Italy, received a call: works of art inside the mansion were about to be auctioned.

Meanwhile, from Madrid, the Ministry of Culture and the Historical Heritage Unit of the Civil Guard had already been activated. Much of this treasure, in fact, should have remained in Spain, in a villa in Marbella, as the ministry had denied export authorization. However, in 2018, it was flown to Italy on Kiss's private jet, for that very purpose, investigators believe. Some pieces had even ended up in the hands of collectors who had unwittingly acquired them at an auction house in Genoa. The objects include canvases, mirrors, tapestries, furniture, and sculptures.

In the collection, a 16th-century altarpiece from the Flemish school and works by Picasso and Modigliani

“It's an international cooperation operation involving us, the Civil Guard, the Italian and Spanish judicial authorities, Eurojust, and the Ministries of Culture of both countries,” explains General Francesco Gargaro, commander of the Carabinieri's Cultural Heritage Protection Unit. “The collaboration consisted of identifying, locating, and ultimately seizing these works of art. The total value is around three million euros.”

The most valuable piece in the collection will soon return to Spain: the 16th-century Flemish altarpiece that gave its name to the operation, carried out with the support of Eurojust. The value of this wooden sculpture, depicting the Passion of Christ, is estimated at around 350,000 euros. The Carabinieri recovered it two years ago in April, simulating an inspection of Kiss's firearms collection: the altarpiece was hanging peacefully on a wall. Last week, in Turin, the official ceremony for the return of the pieces to the Spanish state took place, although, according to investigators, much remains to be found in the hands of private collectors.