OSCE assists UK authorities in "major antiquities recovery operation"

The OSCE (the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe) the OSCE began supporting the United Kingdom Government and London Metropolitan Police in a significant national operation to secure and catalogue just under 200 cultural artefacts (OSCE press release 13 November 2025).

Following a request for assistance from the UK Government and London Metropolitan Police, specialists from the OSCE-led Heritage Crime Task Force will work alongside the Metropolitan Police to ensure the safe extraction, forensic documentation and secure storage of the objects. The collection includes significant items of Cambodian, Bactrian and Gandharan heritage, among others. These items will be examined and catalogued before being repatriated to their countries of origin.

“This operation demonstrates the true power of international co-operation in defending our common heritage and disrupting the networks that are complicit in the trafficking in cultural property,” said Ambassador Alena Kupchyna, the OSCE Co-ordinator of Activities to Address Transnational Threats. “Together, we are sending a clear message: those who profit from the theft, trafficking or destruction of cultural property will be identified, exposed and brought to justice, and these objects will find their way back home.”

As I have already pointed out, in most of these "actions" with their soft-power and feelgood propaganda value, "these objects will find their way back home" (to then create problems for over-stretched museums and officials in the unwitting source-country) takes total precedence over the "identification, exposure and bringing to justice" of those "who profit from the theft, trafficking or destruction of cultural property". In this press release, there is not a peep of that, the usual lack of naming and shaming, no announcement of preventative custody prior to a court case. Nothing. Slapped hand for the culture-criminals, good news for the media.

And of course NONE of this is related to "recovery" of (or fighting the looting of) artefacts looted in the United Kingdom?

What actully has been achieved here, except a few more pretty thgings to put into glass cases?