Egyptian billionaire Naguib Sawiris has offered a reward of 1 million Egyptian pounds ($175,000) for information that would help recover the Van Gogh painting stolen from a museum in Cairo, local media said on Thursday.
The painting, worth about $55 million, was stolen from the private Mohammed Mahmoud Khalil Museum on Saturday. Several people have been detained in connection with the case.
Sawiris, the head of the leading Arab mobile operator Orascom Telecom and the richest man in Egypt and the Middle East, was the first businessman to offer a reward for help in searching the painting.
Prosecutors have said that negligence on the part of museum staff played a role in the theft, noting that only seven of 47 security cameras in the museum were working, the security system was poor and that none of the alarms sounded during the theft.
CAIRO, August 26 (RIA Novosti)