ACCG "embargo" ploy misconceived

The Cultural Heritage Lawyer Rick St Hilaire blog often offers a welcome counterpoint to comments on the blogs of other US lawyers operating in the field. Today's post is no exception ("Smuggling Protected Cultural Property is Not 'Commercial Trade,'" Say Federal Attorneys in Peruvian Artifacts Forfeiture Case  (Monday, October 7, 2013). This concerns the response to an earlier 'Motion to Dismiss'  on behalf of a claimant, Jean Combe Fritz, in a case involving forfeiture of Peruvian artifacts seized at Miami International Airport (covered by Rick St Hilaire on his blog, not previously mentioned, I think, here) . This had argued that the Court of International Trade was the proper venue to litigate a Cultural Property Implementation Act (CPIA) forfeiture:

the government's lawyers contend that the claimant's reading of the law is wrong, citing in part the federal district court case of Ancient Coin Collectors Guild v. U.S. Customs and Border Protection. The ACCG court concluded that it had jurisdiction over "any seizure" by the terms of 28 U.S.C. § 1356.

Readers might remember that adding the latter point was one of the purposes of the ACCG's latest foot-dragging ammendments to their earlier submitted motion (forcing the government to return to this document and draft a totally new reply to delay matters further and presumably intended to bump up the lawyers' fees).  Also:

Objecting to the fact that the "Claimant has imposed burdens on the government that it does not in fact bear," the prosecutors wield the Fourth Circuit Court case of Ancient Coin Collectors Guild v. U.S. Customs and Border Protection to support their position.

It would seem that the ACCG's Baltimore illegal coin import stunt case is beginning to backfire not only on them, but other cultural property importers as well. By their insistence in pushing through a case involving a few worn slugs, they risked creating by their failures a whole lot of legal precedents to further tighten control.  Like this one - seemingly aimed right at the core of the latest round of the current ACCG case:

"It is not the responsibility of the government to prove that an artifact came from Peru, nor do we have any responsibility to prove that the artifacts are 'of cultural significance' to Peru separate from our duty to prove that they are within the designated categories: all of the items on the designated list are, by definition, of cultural significance to Peru."

I suspect there is an added twist in the tail of the ACCG case, because not all the items they imported in fact are.

UPDATE 15th September 2014:
See now: Rick St Hilaire, 'Conservator's Records To Be Subpoenaed As Prosecutors Score Triple Victory in Peruvian Artifacts Forfeiture Cases', Cultural Heritage Lawyer Tuesday, September 16, 2014.