, Columnist
Brazil's Museum of Stolen Beauty
Taxpayers were defrauded to pay for these private collections. Investigators seized them and made them public.
Artwork in custody by Miro.
Courtesy of the Museu Oscar NiemeyerThis article is for subscribers only.
When federal police showed up at his door in Rio de Janeiro with an arrest warrant in late 2014, Renato Duque grabbed the phone. "What kind of country is this?" the former top official at the Brazilian oil company Petrobras exclaimed to his attorney moments before being hauled off to prison on corruption charges.
No one asked me, but I'd say Duque's outburst might have made a fine title for the collection of fine art that the police seized from muckety-mucks caught up in the giant political graft and kickback scandal at Petrobras, known in Brazil as the Car Wash case.