Contaminating the Market with Laundered Loot

Readers may recall that Californian coin dealer Dave Welsh set out to prove, for reasons best known to himself (for he is disputing claims that nobody has actually ever made) that metal detectorists were not the source of the ancient coins on the market. Instead the fault was of some collectors in stereotypically-imagined "communist countries". In yesterday's post, the dugup coin dealer argues that a lot of the coins on the US market had been illegally found and retained (often in erdfrisch state) by collectors in "communist countries" and came onto the market with the collapse of communism after 1989. In examining this concept, I asked:

"Now, I think we'd all like Mr Welsh and the ACCG to explain the difference in LEGAL terms between these two categories of ancient dug up coins from ancient sites in a country in eastern Europe:
(a) coins dug up under a Communist regime when the law says that finds belong to the state which are illegally held and not reported and them sold to an ACCG dealer and, 
(b) coins dug up after 1990 and illegally held and not reported and sold to an ACCG dealer like Mr Welsh?"

Mr Welsh attempts to answer that ("Geography", Monday, October 14, 2013) but dodges the issue by saying that:

not one of these finds was sold directly to this observer, or another reputable and law-abiding coin dealer, such as all ACCG coin dealer members are.

I would imagine from the rest of the contents of this blog, it would be pretty clear to the person of average intelligence that I was not claiming that dealers such as Mr Welsh and the ACCG-US-import-restriction-opposers buy their stock directly from the finders or collectors. Building on his own paper-tiger argument, Mr Welsh revealingly clarifies:  

These illicit finds were were in nearly every case instead sold to a wholesaler in the nation of discovery, who in turn sold them to a smuggler, who then illicitly exported the coins to a nation in which they could openly be sold -- very likely to Germany or Austria [...] From there the finds were dispersed into the international trade. [...] It is important to note that after the illicit smuggling of the coin find in question, every subsequent transaction was licit under the laws of the nation in which it occurred.

In other words, when the illegally obtained goods have been laundered (that's the technical term for the process Mr Welsh describes) "they cannot touch you for it".  Amazingly enough, Mr Welsh has just demolished his own argument from yesterday by which one lot of coins (the collected-illegally-under-communism ones) were supposedly more-Kosher than the freshly looted ones. Oh well, logic and consistency were never qualities for which Mr Welsh has been noted in the heritage debate.

Coming back to the point about laundering making dugup artefacts "legal", both Austria and Germany are states parties of the 1970 UNESCO Convention with its Article 3. Mr Welsh's country is also, yet coin dealers and collectors in the US totally disregard the existence of Art. 3 in a Convention their country says it "honors". It does nothing of the kind. So, Mr Welsh is claiming that it is legal to import objects illegally obtained in one country as long as they are bought through an agency in a third country? But what about the Miami mummy case, bought in Spain? What about the Windsor Antiquities case, Egyptian antiquities imported from Dubai? The Schlz case involving items imported intyo the US from the UK? The various "Medici Case" antiquities purchased in Geneva? These all involved "legally-obtained" artefacts in the eyes of the dealer? The dinosaur 'Tarby' was imported into the US from the UK, not Mongolia. Are these examples of the processes by which the "licit" market is supplied in the eyes of this ACCG dealer? Indeed, dealing in smuggled looted coins seems to be seen by European and US dealers as a no-risk business:

There is no legal difference insofar as transactions subsequent to the smuggling of the coin find are concerned. In case a), the finder ran the risk of being prosecuted for illicit possession of unreported ancient artifacts by the former Communist regime. In case b), the finder ran the risk of illicitly selling the coin find to a wholesaler. In both cases, the smuggler ran the risk of being caught attempting to illicily cross the border without declaring possession of the coins or obtaining an export permit.

No risk then for the dealer who knowingly (or no-questions-asked) buys the stolen, looted and smuggled coins. Note how in case (a) we've suddenly lost the "collector" who was central to the original argument (suggesting that Dealer Dave knew from the beginning that he is mythical). Welsh sums up the ACCG case: "The ACCG has always maintained that the best approach toward controlling illicit export of antiquities is for source states to control their borders", and I think the best approach is for smug dealers like Dave Welsh and his ACCG mates to clean up their act and ensure that they are not bringing looted and smuggled material ("they can't touch you for it") onto a market which they attempt to present as nevertheless a licit one.
 
Note how in Mr Welsh's imaginary model "middleman", "smuggler" and "importer" are separated. What is the evidence of that? Compare this with the arguments of researchers (for example in Bulgaria and in Glasgow) who are now suggesting that at least part of this trade is in the hands of organized gangs, and that these three are in fact part of the same organization. An organization involved in the criminal and corrupt handling of looted archaeological material. An organization that is supplied by artefact hunters at one end and financed by the dealers who at the other end of the chain buy ("no-questions-asked/ it's legal innit?") the products and finance the group's activities. The dealers of the importing countries.

How, then, can a responsible collector avoid purchasing one of the "can't-touch-you-for-it" illegally-exported coins mixed into the market by dealers who like Mr Welsh apparently see "no legal difference" how an antiquity (coin) reached the market, once it has been laundered? One obvious answer is to utilise the facility offered by importers who respect the right of "source states to control their borders" to such a degree that they have documentation of licit export which they can make available to a purchaser who equally respects that right exercised by the source countries on behalf of its citizens.