LONDON, ENGLAND.-Tate Gallery denied Saturday night claims that it paid a ransom to recover two stolen Turner art works. Undercover Art Deal, a BBC documentary, alleges Tate Gallery paid £3.3million to criminals to recover these paintings. The documentary will air on BBC2 on Wednesday. According to this documentary, three payments totalling more than £2.5million were made to secure the return of the paintings. The works were insured for £24million.

Ex-detective superintendent Mike Lawrence told the documentary: "The deal was that the recovery of the art was more important than arrests. It was a strange feeling."

A Tate spokeswoman stated, “What we are absolutely clear about and what was explained at the time, is that no ransom was paid."

The two works - Shade And Darkness: The Evening Of The Deluge, and Light And Colour (Goethe's Theory): The Morning after the Deluge - were stolen from the Schirn Kunsthalle in Frankfurt in 1994 while on loan to the exhibition Goethe And The Visual Arts.