Suspended prison sentence and a fine of 30,000 euros for stealing a Banksy in Paris

The accused admitted to the theft that took place in 2019, but claimed that he had acted on Banksy’s orders – without being able to prove it.

A court in Paris has sentenced a man for stealing a work by a famous street artist Banksy.

The graphic depicting a rat with a box cutter that appeared on a billboard near the Pompidou Center was cut with an angle grinder in September 2019.

According to the French daily Le Parisien, the accused, 38-year-old artist and musician Mejdi R., who was absent from the trial, was sentenced on Wednesday, June 19, to a two-year suspended prison sentence and a fine of EUR 30,000.

According to the accused, Banksy himself asked him to steal it. Apparently, the famous British street artist wanted to prevent others from appropriating or profiting from his work. It was also a way to “denounce the hypocrisy of the capitalist system that tells us which work has value and which does not.”

However, he is unable to prove this (imaginary?) friendship.

Mejdi R. will also have to compensate the Pompidou Center. He will have to pay the museum 3,566 euros for material damage and 3,000 euros for damage to health, as well as 3,000 euros for legal costs, the Paris court decided.

The court actually found that Center Pompidou was not the owner, but only the custodian of the stolen “cultural property.”

The defendant admitted the facts at the hearing on June 10. However, he explained that in his opinion, graffiti “has no value” on the street and that, therefore, he had not stolen any “cultural property” but had only “participated in the degradation of the metal plaque.”

The man also claimed that he worked with a “team” sent by Banksy himself, who then went to England to work.

This is not the first time that the French justice system has been involved in the theft of a Banksy work.

In June 2022, eight men were sentenced in Paris to suspended sentences ranging from six months to two years in prison for stealing or transporting to Italy a Bataclan door decorated with Banksy’s image in tribute to the victims of the November 13, 2015 attacks.

Additional sources • AFP, Le Parisien