ROME–On the night that Romanian billionaire Constantin Dinescu was fatally poisoned, investigators say he had been in the company of two of his favorite Ukrainian lovers at a sex club that occasionally features, among other props, virgin ponies.
Dinescu, 69, was known as the “baron of luxury” for his collections of sports cars, including a personalized Lamborghini, and expensive art, the latter of which raised suspicion that he was the collector for whom Romanian art thieves lifted $65 million worth of paintings, including works by Pablo Picasso, Claude Monet and Henri Matisse from the Kunsthal art museum in Rotterdam in 2017.
Dinescu’s home is reported to have been set up like a museum, with secret rooms for art with questionable provenance and grand halls for art he bought legitimately.
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He was first reported to have fallen ill inside his luxurious home on Romania’s Lake Snagov on Aug. 9. But a preliminary investigation determined that he had actually fallen ill in his car near the sex club and not his home, according to local media reports. He died in a Bucharest hospital on Aug. 15 after being taken there by private ambulance.
Investigators have laid the blame for what is believed to be poisoning on a Ukrainian call girl who was reportedly a favorite of Dinescu’s and whose whereabouts are currently unknown. The baron of luxury reportedly often hired two or more high-priced prostitutes at a time and frequented a number of sex clubs or held orgies at his home.
Dinescu became a suspect in the Kunsthal art heist when investigators set a trap for him with the help of the four Romanian men who were arrested for the theft. The billionaire reportedly bit when they reached out to him to confirm that they had Picasso’s “Harlequin Head,” Matisse’s “La Liseuse en Blanc et Jaune,” two Monets including “Charing Cross Bridge,” and Paul Gauguin’s “Woman in Front of an Open Window,” also known as “La Fiancée.” Dinescu pulled back before confirming the purchase, but was reportedly still under investigation.
The paintings have never been found, and the mother of Radu Dogaru, one of the four Romanians arrested and charged with the break-in, testified that she had burned the paintings in her wooden stove to try to protect her son after his arrest. She later retracted her statement after some of the art showed up on the black market, according to the blog Art Hostage. Investigators did find remnants of nails and canvas in Dogaru’s remote country home, but it is yet unclear whether they are from any of the stolen works.
In 2019, the story resurfaced with a strange twist involving Dutch-Romanian journalist Mira Feticu, who had written a fictional novel about the heist after connecting with the Romanian thieves in prison. In her novel, she solved the case through her main character—a prostitute turned art sleuth. Feticu was sent a false lead to what was supposed to be the Picasso wrapped in plastic buried under a beech tree in a Romanian forest, which turned out to be a fake. She spoke to The Daily Beast about her disappointment at the time, saying, “I hoped to be able to return the paintings to mankind.”
Dinescu’s untimely death has raised suspicion that he may well have acquired one or more of the paintings and that at least one of his orgy partners the night of his death slipped something into his drink. “It is rumored that the woman from the Ukraine said she would put something in his glass,” local Romanian media reported Monday. “He didn't drink or smoke, but that's what the girls said.”
In a communique sent to The Daily Beast, the Police Inspectorate of Constanta County in Romania confirmed that they are investigating the billionaire’s death as “suspicious” and working to determine who wanted the eccentric art collector dead and just who had access to his house to potentially remove anything he might have been hiding there.
