Arts looting: another inside job

The security chief at eight Buddhist temples north of Beijing has been arrested for his involvement in China's biggest case of trafficking in cultural relics, state-run media reported today.

The relics, many of them Buddhist figurines that once belonged to Beijing's Palace Museum, surfaced at an auction by Christie's auction house in Hong Kong last October. The New China News Agency said Li Haitao, the director of security at the Eight Outer Temples, allegedly stole 158 relics over 12 years in Chengde, a city north of Beijing that was an imperial summer resort.

Li was accused of replacing stolen objects with copies, the news agency said. After some time, he began taking pieces home without replacing them, the report said. The thefts went undetected because five successive directors of his department failed to check the number of relics.

Posted by David on June 24, 2003 10:36 AM