An $8 million Basquiat painting and a Roman Togatus statue that were illegally smuggled into the United States by a convicted São Paulo banker were returned to the government of Brazil today at a ceremony in New York. The artworks’ former owner, Edemar Cid Ferreira, was convicted in Brazil in 2005 of fraud and laundering one billion dollars as the founder and president of Banco Santos. Before being caught, he had been converting some of these ill-gotten profits into a 12,000-piece art collection worth an estimated $20 to 30 million, according to Brazilian officials.
