A Frenchman has pleaded guilty to attempting to sell four valuable paintings that were stolen from a French art museum last year in a brazen robbery by masked, armed thieves. Bernard Jean Ternus, 56, admitted that he had conspired to sell the paintings for about $4.7 million (£2.3 million) to buyers who turned out to be undercover FBI and French police agents.

Four of their meetings were videotaped and dozens of conversations were recorded, Christopher Hunter, an assistant US attorney, said. “Why are you pleading guilty?” asked Patricia Seita, the US district judge. “Because I am guilty,” Mr Ternus replied, speaking in French that was then translated into English.

The paintings stolen in August 2007 from the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Nice, include two well-known Impressionist works: Cliffs Near Dieppe by Claude Monet and The Lane of Poplars at Moret by Alfred Sisley. The other two were painted by the 17th-century Flemish master Jan Brueghel the Elder, Allegory of Earth, and Allegory of Water.

Mr Ternus, a French citizen who had been living in a suburb of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, faces a maximum sentence of five years in federal prison and up to $250,000 in fines. Sentencing is due to take place in September. (AP)

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