Laundering the Loot

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There was an interview on Channel 4 News with Christos Tsirogiannis (researcher in illicit antiquities and repatriation cases at Cambridge University, and formerly archaeologist with the Greek police squad). He warned that the economic recession will lead, in the countries that have an archaeological record rich with the remains of ancient civilisations (such as Greece, Italy and Egypt) we are going to see big problems with looting of sites and theft from collections. "In Greece, this is connected with the financial situation. We will have more of such things coming up in the next few months", he said. In the case of the Olympia Museum theft, he suggests: "The people who stole this are uneducated people with no money, who are not aware it will be difficult to give these objects to the market as they are recorded, and there are pictures of them. They do it for money, but they are not aware it will be really difficult to get rid of them". He then goes on to describe possible smuggling routes:

It may be the case that some of them end up in refrigeration trucks transporting food in order to be smuggled across borders, through Turkey and the former Yugoslavia, before reaching Europe where they are likely to fetch up a higher price. Another popular route for other goods illegally seized or excavated from Asia, Mr Tsirogiannis said, is aboard ships to Italy. From there they may make their way to Switzerland, and from there, he said, they may be laundered in auctions in London and New York before being sold to private museums and collectors.

"Richard Ellis (former Scotland Yard detective who set up the Metropolitan Police's Art and Antiques Squad, now a specialist art and antiquities crime investigator) was also interviewed. He said that art and antiquities theft

"has become an organised crime business". Criminal business in illicit and stolen antiquities is fast rivalling the illicit trade in fine art in terms of cost and scale, and with culture thieves, middlemen and dealers taking advantage of the increasingly deteriorating economic situation in modern countries occupying the territories of some of the world's most ancient civilisations, the trade is likely to continue to boom. Channel 4 adds: "While experts say it is almost impossible to estimate the true cost of the trade in illicit antiquities, some say costs can vary between $50 million to $1 billion".

According to Mr Ellis, many [sites/museums] are looted or excavated by poorer local people looking to make some fast yet small amounts of cash, before being sold on to intermediaries. The real mark up, he says, comes in the stage after that, after they have been passed on to dealers. From here they can end up in auction houses or with private collectors, having changed hands for millions of dollars. In some cases, Mr Ellis said, collectors are aware they are trading in illegal goods, despite a rise in 'due dilligence' to establish the provenance of items.

Now, Mr Ellis told Channel 4 News, "the incentive is there to make money in Greece [...] I am sure the current economic situation is Greece is triggering people to become more active [in this type of illegal activity]". "I would expect these objects are going to get moved. It's a transitional country for other stolen goods, and they can go west or east", Mr Ellis said.

Attempted reconstruction of some possible smuggling routes
for Classical and Byzantine antiquities from Greece

So, before passing onto - for example - the US market, a freshly illegally dugup artefact, or one recently stolen from a museum or private collection, may have clandestinely passed through several countries on their way out of Greece. It is pretty obvious that not every case of the unlawful export of objects from Greece will be detected at the Greek borders. It is unreasonable to expect Greek Customs to unload every truck of - for example - frozen kalmary or meat leaving the country at the roadside to check whether there are small antiquities hidden right at the back, or strip search every tourist and business traveller leaving the country. If it were possible to stop this so easily, there would have been no need for a 1970 UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property. In order therefore to combat culture theft, it is necessary to establish the origins of objects of types that are found in a source country like Greece coming onto the market through other countries. Unless something can be documented as having legally entered Ruritania from Greece, or at least the import into Ruritania was so long ago that investigation is not going to determine how it got there and is a waste of time, its export to an external market should be seen as suspect. Obviously legislation intending to combat the international trade needs to take into account the mobility of the artefacts ("portable antiquities") in recent times, and the ability of cultural criminals to 'launder items' by taking them through other countries such as Switzerland and the German markets.

It should be noted that it is PRECISELY this aspect of the legislation that dealers lobbyists (ACCG and Peter Tompa's employers the PNG in particular) are currently actively fighting. This shows a less-than-willingness to co-operate in cutting down the illicit trade by dealing with laundering. It is also an area where current legislation and regulation, both national and international are woefully lacking, being stuck in a mental time-warp as though it was still the 1960s.

Details of New York Coin Bust

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Readers might be interested in the article in the new Coin World magazine about the investigations of the sales of two ancient Greek coins of Sicily (Jeff Starck, 'Officials seize two ancient coins at NYINC, Detain owner of coin with $2.5 million opening bid', Coin World online Jan. 09, 2012). The coins were scheduled to be sold at auction in New York City on Jan. 4 at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in Manhattan scheduled in conjunction with the New York International Numismatic Convention. The previous day (Jan. 3) however, officials from the Department of Homeland Security and the New York County District Attorney’s Office seized two coins and reportedly detained their owner and seller, Dr. Arnold-Peter Weiss.

The coins were a silver decadrachm of Akragas, and a silver tetradrachm from Katane (lots 1008 and 1009). Both coins are rare types, of the 12 examples of the Acragas coin, six are in museums. In addition to the piece discussed here, the other five include those offered in 1998 by CNG in a 1998 Triton auction ("a dreadful example"). An example in better condition was part of the famous Nelson Bunker Hunt Collection sold in 1990. Two other examples are privately held in the United States, and one “apparently in Switzerland,” according to CNG. It was stated in the catalogue that the example that has been seized has been "in unnamed collections in the United States and Switzerland after being part of an English collection in London in the 1960s". It is worth noting that of the six in private hands, five are or have been in the United States, showing the predominance of the US in the global market in these kinds of objects.

Dr. Arnold-Peter Weiss is a world renowned hand surgeon, a professor of orthopedics at Brown University School of Medicine and Rhode Island Hospital, both in Providence, R.I. He is also a partner in the Swiss-based coin dealing group Nomos AG, and a trustee of the American Numismatic Society.

Alan Walker, director of Nomos, said: “All the coins are in the U.S. legally. All of the coins left Europe legally. It was all handled 100 percent by the law, as far as we know.” Later, Walker added, “He [Weiss] has very good legal counsel and is 100 percent innocent.” [...] Victor England Jr., senior director of CNG, [...] declined to answer any more questions about the situation, saying, “Until we have talked to our attorney, we have no comment.”

This is a bit of a blow to the confidence of the coin market, CNG officials had anticipated the Akragas coin would become the most expensive coin of ancient Greece ever sold.

The high visibility of both of the coins — which received widespread press (including a story in the British media) — and the seller, altered the mood of the show. Discussions about the seizure of the coins quickly spread on coin collector chat forums.

At the moment, very few details of the seizure of the coins and the detention of Weiss are public, they will no doubt be published as they become available.

UPDATE 11.01.12:
In an exclusive article on the Chasing Aphrodite blog (rapidly becoming a key go-to resource) we read the following information concerning one of the recently-seized coins:

"According to a criminal complaint filed with the NYC District Attorney’s office, Weiss was secretly recorded telling a confidential informant that he knew one of the coins he was selling had been recently looted: “There’s no paperwork, I know this is a fresh coin, this was dug up a few years ago,” the complaint quotes Weiss telling the informant. “This was dug up two years ago. I know where this came from.” Weiss also allegedly told DA investigator John Freck that he knew the coin had been recently looted and belonged to the government of Italy, the complaint alleges. Under Italian law, all antiquities in the ground belong to the Italian state. [...] Weiss has been accused of one count of criminal possession of stolen property, a felony. He is due in court on March 21 for “possible grand jury action,” said NYC DA’s spokeswoman Diem Tran. (Case number 1299081) We’ve posted a copy of the complaint here.

This however refers only to one coin, the one which has the non-provenance of "bought in 2010", what is less clear is why the other coin (said to have a collecting history going back to the 1960s) was seized. Unsubstantiated comments on the Forum coin discussion list (philmcraighin January 08, 2012, 02:09:32 pm) has it that:

Further to what has been mentioned in postings, I have been told that Dr Wiess was arrested by homeland security and held for 48 hours at the Fed building in New York and an Italian dealer has now been questioned concerning the origin of the famous Akragas.

Rick St. Hilaire also has an informative text on the subject, setting out the legal background.

Antiquities Dealer Arrest Reported: Hoax?

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Art Hostage is reporting (following an unsigned post on the Kleintje Muurkrant blog) the following news:

After a long investigation cooperating police forces of Italy, Greece and Turkey (informed by Dutch art-dealer Michel van Rijn) found enough evidence to have a Lebanese art-dealer arrested in Geneva, a few days ago. Ali Aboutaam, together with his brother Hisham, owner of the Phoenix Ancient Art Gallery is accused of dealing in smuggled ancient artifacts from several Meditteranean countries, which the police confiscated during the action. [...] Mr. Aboutaam is free on bail while awaiting his trial.

It also attaches this gossipy 'backstory'.

I am not sure what to make of this 'exclusive' information as I feel we should treat anything emerging from MVR and his fellows with a little circumspection, and this appears to be one of those stories - as yet unconfirmed anywhere else.

I am a bit puzzled by the notion that this alleged event occurred as the result of "a year of surveillance by Italian, Greek, Turkish etc police". Under what circumstances would the police forces working together on this? Were the antiquities concerned allegedly smuggled from Turkey to Greece, Greece to Italy and then on to Geneva? What charges would have been brought and on what basis (on the basis of the law of which of the three countries reportedly concerned)? Such an arrest would necessarily be preceded by the arrest of the smugglers who actually committed the crime of removing the items from the country, where is the evidence that this has happened?

Perhaps Mr Aboutaam might need the services of a good international cultural property lawyer in the future, what do people reckon, will it be Bailey and Ehrenberg's services they will be considering? Who knows?

Phoenix Ancient Art Gallery has attracted attention on this blog a couple of times in addition to other coverage elsewhere. It is somewhat controversial, at times collaborating with the authorities, in the seizure of an Iraqi statue a couple of years back, but then also apparently in trouble with them at other times. Ali Aboutaam was reportedly sentenced to 15 years imprisonment in absentia in Egypt in 2004 for smuggling ancient artefacts when one of the biggest antiquity trafficking rings in Egypt was smashed. There is however a lack of reliable information about his part in all this (actually about that investigation as a whole) and I have heard conflicting accounts whether the reported initial conviction of several of the people allegedly involved (including Mr Aboutaam) was overturned or not. I suspect it was and the Egyptian authorities (guess who?) are not admitting it. There are a lot of weird stories about the two colourful brothers. Readers may remember the curious episode when he was reportedly stopped in Bulgaria and allegedly held under a strange kind of house arrest which apparently allowed him to be in both Sofia and the opening of his New York gallery at the same time. Phoenix was also the source of the Ka Nefer Nefer mask in the SLAM which the dealer had supplied with a collecting history that has been widely questioned.

Let us see what developments occur in this story over the next few days, but my suspicion is that it will turn out not to be true.

UPDATE 7th July 2011: I see the Art Hostage story has now disappeared, suggesting that its author too has had doubts about its veracity. If you look in the Internet you will see a couple of such reports excitedly saying much the same thing every few years, and apparently all wrong. It is notable that most of them appear to be made by the same person hiding under different pseudonyms, which makes one wonder who told the initial (Dutch) Kleintje Muurkrant blog the story, and who the "Mabrouk" (it means "congratulations") is who has been sending insistent and then insulting comments to this post (below). I think this story is an outright hoax.

Vignette: Phoenix - Free Clip Art at FunDraw.com

Big-Eared Hare and Hedgehogs on Egyptian "Hunting" Relief

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They've had a 'revolution' (looking these days more like a coup) and the country is in shambles but antiquities still fulfil their traditional role in international affairs. So Egypt is trumpeting the return of the "first artefact repatriated to Egypt after the revolution" (later said to be the second because the cartoonish relief from Mexico was afforded that status). Anyway this latest success in getting back stuff stolen from Egyptian antiquities stores and monuments and smuggled out through those supposedly "secure" airports and ports is a fifth dynasty limestone relief of a hunting scene 51cm high x 83cm in width which Egypt is getting back from the Antikenmuseum in Basel, Switzerland. The collecting history of this item is not discussed, how did it get into the Basel collection, where had it been (allegedly and actually) before then?

What are the grounds for demanding its return? ("The Basel museum volunteered to return this piece immediately after discovering that it was stolen from Saqqara"). "[Dr] Hawass will shortly be contacting the ministry of foreign affairs to arrange for an MSAA representative to travel to Switzerland to collect the relief". He'll have to take a big black bag with him to bring it back {but the Ministry already has one, found on a platform in a metro station}.

The Antikenmuseum has already sent back the eye of a colossal quartzite statue of Amenhotep III (c. 1390-1352 BC) found in 1970 at his funerary temple in Kom el-Hettan area on the Luxor west bank. The eye was smuggled out of the country and loaned to the museum by a private collector, where it was recognised by Egyptologist, Hourig Sourouzian, and returned to the Egyptian Museum in Cairo in October 2008.

I wonder just what a museum does with something like this. Its an unwieldy block of stone with pictures of animals on it, some of them incomplete - going off the edge of the block. The picture does not make much sense. The photo being used in the media - presumably supplied by the MSAA is in fact the centrefold from the popular magazine Kmt (one might suspect that the appearance of this photo in the article 'The Egyptian Collection of Basel’s Antikenmuseum' by Lucy Gordan-Rastelli was the reason why the object was spotted by the Egyptians). Its a pretty poorly-lit photo and it suggests the scene shows hedgehog-like animals and a hare with enormous ears.

Presumably is we saw these figures in the context of the whole block they would make more sense, as would the block as part of the whole series of scenes from which it has been extracted, and that would make sense only when seen in its position in the tomb alongside the others, and that would make more sense in the context of what fifth dynasty tombs in lower Egypt generally show. What function is served by a contextless block lit more (or less) dramatically in a gallery in Switzerland, isolated from all of that? An "example of Old Kingdom art"? But are hedgehogs big-eared lagomorphs typically Old Kingdom subjects? Presented in an isolated decontextualised form, what information do they supply the viewer about Old Kingdom Egypt? Or is their function in fact to provide "information" (the function usually assigned to 'universal museum collections')? Is this not just a rich man's trophy, like some people collect shiny cars and glamorous trophy wives? Why do we need the public display of lumps of stone with ancient pictures of animals - especially stolen ones? More to the point, what are the Egyptians going to do with it when they get it back?

UPDATE: Alain Guilleux suggests the big-eared creature is a rabbit or hare but I suspect rabbits (orycytolagus cuniculus) were not present in Egypt in pharaonic times. I find though that the desert hare (Lepus capensis) was, and some individuals do indeed seem to have some pretty imposing ears.


Photo: A desert hare running away from antiquity smugglers, I wonder how many would, like me, prefer to look at a properly-presented exhibition of decent wildlife photography than some scruffy animal pictures on old ripped-off stonework.

Heba Hesham, Egypt to regain stolen limestone painting from Switzerland
bikya masr, May 12th, 2011

Nevine El-Aref, 'Old Kingdom relief first artefact repatriated to Egypt after revolution', Al-Ahram, 11 May 2011.

UPDATE- UPDATE 8th June 2011:
A followup article 'Switzerland returns stolen Egyptian antique' tells us the relief is already back in Egypt and adds the information that "The relief [...] was apparently stolen from the Saqqara Necropolis, south of Cairo, 10 years ago. The piece was not reported stolen but when its surfaced in Switzerland museum officials in Basel carried out tests to trace its provenance". Good for them.

Swiss Legislation on Illicit Antiquities trade

From Swissinfo.ch:

Long seen as a hub of global art trafficking, Switzerland’s image is improving five years after a law on the international transfer of art objects came into force. Alongside the United States, France and Britain, Switzerland is one of the principle trading centres for art.

But until 2005 there was no law or national regulation governing this lucrative sector, which accounted for SFr1.39 billion ($1.21 billion) of imports and SFr1.4 billion of exports in 2009. This situation encouraged traffickers and unscrupulous art collectors.

In June 2005, lawmakers passed regulations governing the import of cultural property into Switzerland, its transit, export and repatriation. It includes measures against illicit transfer, as well, including due diligence for traders and auctioning businesses. [...] Switzerland is now a model for other countries in the way it tackles the issue, according to Jean-Frédéric Jauslin, the head of the Culture Office.[...] Yet the art scene was at first fiercely opposed to regulation of the market, believing that this could destroy business. They worried in vain: in 2009 Switzerland climbed from fifth to fourth in the ranking of global art centres.

the rest here.

It is notable that the model here is both legislation as well as a public information campaign about the damage done by looting. "The art scene was at first fiercely opposed to regulation of the market, believing that this could destroy business" sound familiar? Maybe the ACCG should visit Switzerland. The piece continues with a section on the kind of bilateral agreements that are so 'controversial' in 'certain' collecting circles over the other side of the Atlantic:

“The fight against plundering and cultural-goods trafficking should know no boundaries,” commented Giovanni Nistri, commander of the Italian cultural heritage protection brigade, who was invited to Gandria by the Culture Office to stress the importance of transnational cooperation in this area. In fact, Switzerland has concluded five bilateral accords: with Italy and Peru in 2006, with Greece in 2007, and with Colombia and Egypt in 2010. Thanks to these accords, cultural goods considered to have a high national-heritage value enjoy extra protection and can be the subject of judicial cooperation.

The authors of the piece following the lead set by the Swiss culture office stress the nature and importance of the threat:

Tempted by the prospect of rapid gains, smugglers and criminal organisations will stop at nothing. Many emerging nations and developing countries are the first victims of this type of commerce yet scarcely have the means to fight it and protect their treasures. The plunderers, on the other hand, often have sophisticated tools at their disposal, such as satellites, enabling them to locate sites likely to conceal archaeological treasure. The criminals can also count on corruption to be able to transfer the objects with ease. Cambodia, Colombia, Italy and Mali in particular suffer systematic plundering of their archaeological sites. In Cambodia, what is available for purchase is said to exceed demand, and in the south of the peninsula, some 100,000 antique tombs have been plundered in recent years. The fruits of these illegal raids often end up for sale on the internet – a “free” market and the ideal platform for selling goods quickly and slipping things through the net. Despite all efforts and the international fight against art trafficking, plundering has massively increased in recent decades. At the Culture Office and Unesco there is no hesitation in speaking of “the risk to our cultural heritage which is threatened with destruction”.

Let us compare that with the efforts of the dealers in artefacts through the internet in the US who are strenuous in their efforts to protect the no-questions-asked trade which shields the passage of these illicit antiquities onto the market. I think a valid question here is whether groups like the ACCG could be formed in Switzerland to fight for a wholly no-questions-asked market there, and how would public opinion treat them if they were?