Vincent van Gogh’s famous painting “Poppy Flowers”, said to be valued at $55 million, was stolen from the Mohamed Mahmoud Khalil Museum in Cairo due to lax security. “Poppy Flowers” is one of the most important works of art by Van Gogh, painted in 1887, three years before he committed suicide.

Investigation revealed that only seven out of 43 security cameras worked and none of the alarms for the paintings was functioning in August last when it was stolen. Incidentally, “Poppy Flowers” had been stolen once before in 1978. It was recovered from an undisclosed location in Kuwait two years later. “Poppy Flowers” came to Egypt in the early 1940s when the late Egyptian artist and former Member of Parliament Mohamed Mahmoud Khalil bought a wide range of valuable paintings from Europe.