The Serbian Connection: The Art World Does Deals with "All-Singing, All-Dancing Criminals"

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It emerges from an Art Newspaper article today that quite a few stolen art works from Western European collections are turning up in southeastern Europe. There seems to be an international network of connections between organized criminal groups in the Balkans along which illicitly obtained artworks and antiques (the Ashton Keynes lecturn) - and I would not mind betting antiquities - are moving. This article highlights one section of the activity, the Serbian connection.

European art recovery experts are increasingly concentrating on developing their businesses in the Balkans to track down stolen works of art circulating in the region’s criminal networks. Dick Ellis, the former head of the Metro­politan Police Art & Antiques Unit has, with four Serbians, including businessmen and private investigators, set up "Art Management", a specialist art recovery firm to focus on the Balkan region.

We understand that, in addition to Ellis’ firm, at least two other private investigators are active in the region, while the Art Loss Register (ALR) has launched a campaign targeting Balkan criminals. The ALR, whose representatives made around eight trips to the region last year, presented a briefing document at a conference in Barcelona last October, setting out options for recovery in a notoriously difficult region.

Since the break-up of Yugoslavia and the subsequent war, the authorities have largely focused on hunting war criminals and combating drug trafficking. However, the region has become an important transit point for art stolen from France, Switzerland, Austria, Germany, the former Czechoslo­vakia, Hol­land and Belgium by well-known gangs including the “Balkan Bandits” and the “Pink Panthers”. While Serbia is the main base for the gangs, many of the stolen works are emerging in surrounding Macedonia, Kosovo and Montenegro. Charlie Hill, another former Met Police detective, says that, despite the silly names, “these … are all-singing, all-dancing criminals. The problem with art crime in the Balkans is that it’s a fascinating nightmare—the crim­inals are a nightmare but the art turning up is fascinating.”

The rest of the Art Newspaper article discusses the ethical issues involved in paying ransoms to recover stolen artworks.

[The Serbian Connection, orange areas where art is stolen from, green, where it is ending up.

Who in the antiquities trade sells antiquities of likely Serbian, Montenegran, Kosovan and
Makedonian origins and where do they come from?]

Riah Pryor. 'Balkans targeted in hunt for stolen art', The Art Newspaper January 19, 2012.

Donna Bowater, 'Brass lectern stolen from Wiltshire church turns up at Romanian antique fair' Telegraph 08 Jan 2012 (Ornate brass lectern stolen from a church in Ashton Keynes in Wiltshire worth around £2,000 found on sale in Romania)

The Antiquities Conflict

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Meg Lambert has an interesting post on her blog in which (against the background of this blog being targeted by metal detectorists) she asks whether the antiquities "issue" should not be seen more generally as an antiquities "conflict" ("The Illicit Antiquities Trade as Conflict vs. Issue = Scary Stuff") and that heritage blogging in such a situation is less like having a cosy chat with and about like minded people but more akin to "sitting in a redwood [...] while the chainsaws idle below you".

The illicit antiquities trade is not just an issue the way global warming is an issue; it’s an intractable conflict the same way the Israeli/Palestinian conflict is an intractable conflict, which is to say it is long-standing, has eluded resolution, appears impossible to solve, and has threatened the safety of those involved.

It's a big money business of course, but one reliant on maintaining public complacency. Saving the archaeological record from being riddled with holes like Gruyère cheese by being turned into a mine for saleable and collectable geegaws involves shaking that complacency - the origins of which have a multitude of sources. In the case of England Nigel Swift of Heritage Action (again with reference to recent events affecting this blog and its owner) has pointed out the mechanisms of part of it connected with the denuding of sites in that country by artefact hunters ('Why it matters).

The question is who is responsible for the existence of a conflict, the tree huggers or the guys with chainsaws? After all, there is "common ground", they are both interested in "trees".

Another Antiquities Storeroom Looted by Armed Gang in Egypt

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Nevine El-Aref, writing in Al-Ahram on Friday 1 Apr 2011:

Armed looters broke in to the Tel El-Dabaa antiquities warehouse on Thursday, stealing artefacts and breaking several pieces of the stored collection. Mohamed Abdel Maqsoud, head of the Central Administration of Antiquities of Alexandria and Lower Egypt, said the warehouse was used to store artifacts found at Tel El-Dabaa's archaelogical sites by Dutch and German excavation missions over the last 30 years. They include a collection of ancient Egyptian clay pots and amulets.

I find the use of the term "warehouse" highly annoying here. What are being robbed in Egypt today are not "antiquities warehouses". A warehouse is where items destined for sale are temporarily held by merchants. What was broken into here is a storeroom of material from an ongoing archaeological project being archived for future work and research, not selling off to collectors eager to get their hands on their own private little "pieces of the past". In stealing this material, robbers are hindering - or removing any possibility - of using that material to write a public past. The results of decades' work by groups of dedicated people is being trashed overnight by these raids.

Now I really do not accept what one British artefact collector and propagandist for the artefact trade recently suggested, that this looting is a "a cry of frustration from the poor and dispossessed" desperate acts "of the forgotten underclass" against their government. Forgotten underclasses do not carry guns and anaesthetics to render guards unconscious. Forgotten underclasses in most parts of rural Egypt can barely afford a donkey. What we see in Egypt before our very eyes is the early stages of the development of networks of illegal activity involving antiquities, due entirely to their value (real, or perceived) on the antiquities market. The current political instability in Egypt is allowing them becoming bolder and will lead to them becoming better organized into criminal networks. Then foreign collectors and dealers will be happy as there will be lots more ancient Egyptian antiquities on the no-questions-asked external markets, and they can all make a heavy profit from helping to finance these new organized criminal groups in their free-enterprise emptying of the fragile and finite archaeological record onto the commercial market.

We have seen this before, most notably in eastern Europe in the political instability caused by the collapse of the Soviet bloc. We have seen how the international antiquities market has profited, and continues to profit from the illegal activities of artefact hunters in southeastern Europe (Bulgaria in particular) and now - as that source dries up - in other regions of the former eastern bloc (such as northwestern Russia and the Baltic states). We saw the same thing in Afghanistan then Iraq. Dealers and collectors deny this process took place and deny their responsibility for helping fund it, let us observe now the same thing happening in post-Mubarak Egypt. I'd like to draw attention to the fact that none of the pro-market collectors blogs or forums open to public view have expressed any real concern about this looting, why should they when they are obviously silently waiting for the artefacts to start flowing onto a market near them?

For those who cannot place Tel El-Dabaa, this is the site of some really very interesting and modern excavations on what is thought to be Avaris, a central place in the Hyksos realm and in the story of the rise and functioning of the New Kingdom but also - some would argue - having its place in Biblical history as well. The dealers and collectors who will be handling the artefacts stolen from this storeroom in their efforts to pursue a vision of a "people's archaeology" (sic) through the collection of random decontextualised artefacts of specific type are not dismembering history stolen just from the Egyptian people, but from us all.

Photo: Tel El-Dabaa, the future site no doubt of criminal organizations' artefact mines to tap the ample resources offered no-questions-asked by the international antiquities market. History for all becomes a blank, a looted site and a handful of collectable geegaws in a Chicago suburban back room.

Perhaps only Memnon knows, and he's not telling

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The night I left Luxor there was quite a brutal robbery in the Kom el-Hettan storerooms of the team excavating the Temple of Amenhotep III. Two freshly excavated sculptures were stolen, suggesting the thieves had received a tip-off that they were there. A few days later the sculptures were back in the storeroom, and the thieves caught. The newspapers said that: "The statues were found hidden inside the home of Ahmed El Zot, the head of an armed gang, who is infamous for his dishonesty. Three other members of the gang are also in custody". The men shortly afterwards got fifteen years for the offence. I was struck by that phrase that a guy who was known (?) to be the head of an organized criminal gang involved in antiquity offences "is infamous for his dishonesty". In what? Cheating on his wife? Not telling the shopkeeper he has given too much change? Did this previous infamy for "dishonesty" in some way involve antiquities and who had "known" about it? Is there more to this story than meets the eye? Or should we not listen to gossip?