Looted antiquities, organized crime, money laundering, and terrorism

An article of merit in today's Financial Times:

For dealers trading in stolen antiquities, the orgy of looting at Baghdad's national museum in the chaotic days after the fall of Saddam Hussein was bad news. The blaze of publicity has shone an unwelcome spotlight on their sometimes murky world. . .

The trade in ancient artefacts brings together dealers of all shades with some of the world's richest people, prestigious museums and art galleries. It ties poor people plundering archaeological sites to international crime networks and terrorists.

Wherever there is a coincidence of historic sites and conflict, chaos or political instability, in Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Cambodia, Mali and elsewhere, looters are there. They take from museums, but more frequently from archaeological sites. Once removed, the artefacts are often lost to scholarship. . .

There is a growing body of evidence that connects the trade in looted antiquities with organised crime. . .

Richard Allan, a Liberal Democrat member of parliament who is sponsoring legislation aimed at curbing the trade in Britain, told the House of Commons in April that it was also clear from British police and the Federal Bureau of Investigation information "that there is a link between the removal and transport of cultural objects and the funding of terrorism".

He said Scotland Yard seized £3m of Bactrian art from Afghanistan in September 2001. "The pieces are 3,000 years old and had been looted by members of the Northern Alliance and sold via Pakistan to fund the war effort against the Taliban regime." In 2000, a valuable Indian stone frieze was seized from a London auction house. "That piece was being sold by Sri Lankan terrorists to fund their war effort."

Rodolfo Ronconi, director of Italy's international police co-operation services department, says the antiquities trade is also - like that in stolen art - often linked to money laundering. Irving Finkel of the British Museum says that antiquities often move in parallel with drugs. "The value of antiquities and their portability mean they are the ideal things for these sorts of people." Julian Radcliffe of the Art Loss Register, an arts theft database, agrees. "I used to be sceptical about whether stolen art is being used in money laundering. Now I'm not."

Despite the lingering myth of shadowy criminal aesthetes squirreling away masterpieces in their secret pleasure domes, the use of stolen art as underworld currency is much better documented. The article goes on to discuss efforts to compile lists of stolen objects, and the pitfalls involved (public lists, of course, are also open to antiquities smugglers). This note about Iraq has not received wide play elsewhere:

But any database is only as good as the information in it. Experts documented more than 3,000 pieces as having been looted from regional museums in Iraq after the 1991 war. But Ronald Noble, secretary-general of Interpol, told a conference this month that only one piece from Iraq made its way to his organisation's database.

Mention is also made of the differences from country to country in the legal status of stolen goods, which helps explain why Europe much more than the USA or Britain is a center for illicit artefact trading:

"Crooks move into countries where the law is very favourable to the holders," says Mr Radcliffe. In the Netherlands, for example, a thief of an object becomes its legal owner after 19 years. Switzerland's free ports allow the easy import and export of antiquities, no questions asked. . .

The law in continental Europe is also more favourable to the so-called "good faith buyer" than to the victim. In the UK, however, courts also tend to favour the victim unless the holder demonstrates that the piece was bought in good faith, that a long time has elapsed since it was stolen or plundered, and that the victim was not advertising the loss or making serious efforts to find it.

US law also favours the victim. "The laws of the US are much more favourable to the claims of the original owner than European laws. Purchasers who pay money in good faith cannot get title to stolen property," says Lawrence Kaye of Herrick, Feinstein, a New York law firm that has acted on behalf of governments trying to reclaim cultural objects.

On the other hand, American museums have not always taken the greatest of care to insure acquisitions have not been illegally excavated or exported, though international pressure has had a significant impact in recent years.

Posted by David on May 24, 2003 8:57 PM