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Showing posts with label art and organized crime. Show all posts
Showing posts with label art and organized crime. Show all posts

February 3, 2011

Profile: ARCA Lecturer Edgar Tijhuis on Transnational Crime, Organized Crime and Illicit Art and Antiquities


by Catherine Schofield Sezgin

Edgar Tijhuis, lawyer and assistant-professor of Criminology at the VU University in Amsterdam, in The Netherlands, will return to Amelia for the third year to teach “Criminology, Art, and Transnational Organized Crime” for ARCA’s Postgraduate Program in International Art Crime and Cultural Property Protection Studies.

Tijhuis, the author of Transnational Crime and the Interface between Legal and Illegal Actors – The Case of the Illicit Art and Antiquities Trade (Nijmegen, Wolf Legal Publishers, 2006), published a chapter in Art & Crime: Exploring the Dark Side of the Art World (Praeger, 2009), “Who Is Stealing All Those Paintings?” He is also associated with the Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement in Amsterdam.

ARCA blog: Professor Tijhuis, your essay in Art & Crime makes the point, as Noah Charney wrote in a long footnote, “that most experts are going on hearsay from police about Organized Crime and art crime, with relatively little empirical data and evidence beyond the word of police, undercover agents, and criminals.” Since publishing this article in 2009, do you think that anything had changed? Have you seen any data that would support the level of activity of Organized Crime in the illicit and antiquities trade?
Professor Tijhuis: It is difficult to answer this question briefly. To be sure, I did not mean to say that “organized crime” is not involved in crimes related to art. The point is that general claims of this involvement do not seem to be based on firm empirical data. In fact, “art crime” consists of all kinds of rather different types of (criminal) activity, in uncountable places around the world. With some specific types of art crime, one can clearly see an “organized” character, with others there does not seem to be any organization at all and with many we simply do not know or we see all kind of different ways of organizing these crimes. To make it even more complex, an ongoing debate among criminologists focuses on the whole concept of “organized crime”. Do we actually focus on actors (organizations) or activities?
At this moment different studies try to shed light on these topics. Among others, Noah Charney and myself are involved in these studies and I hope they will enhance our knowledge.
ARCA blog: As a practical point, do you think that Organized Crime uses stolen art and antiquities in part of the trade on illegal drug and arms activities? Are you aware of any data that ties stolen art or antiquities to any other illegal activities supported by Organized Crime networks?
Professor Tijhuis: Again, we are dealing with a rather broad category of crimes that take place all around the world. I am not aware of data that systematically connects art crimes with other illegal activities. However, one can find examples of connections with other crimes in specific places around the world.
ARCA blog: What is the difference between transnational crime and Organized Crime and how does this influence the way you teach your course for ARCA?
Professor Tijhuis: First of all, transnational crime clearly involves cross-border types of crime. At the same time, it does not necessarily involve all kind of criminal organizations but may involve individuals or constantly changing networks of people involved in specific crimes. The different terms are related to the different perspectives on crime that were mentioned earlier. When one takes actors as the starting point of studies, one will use the terms “organized crime” or “transnational organized crime”. Transnational crime, on the contrary, is sometimes used when one takes (illicit) activities as starting point.
ARCA blog: What is your current area of focus as related to art crime?
Professor Tijhuis: Currently I'm looking at several specific topics. One of them is “profiling”. We look at ways to profile art crimes, either geographically or psychological. Furthermore, together with Noah Charney, I am working on an article on Organized Crime and Art Crime, which should help to clarify things for readers and students alike, and which will combine our two approaches. We very much enjoy working together, and this is the first of what we hope will be several collaborative future projects.
ARCA blog: Will you be doing anything differently in your class this year?
Professor Tijhuis: Each year I try to add new elements and change the material. This year will probably have somewhat less purely criminological theory and more theory on organized crime and white- collar crime. Furthermore, recent literature and cases always provide wonderful new material.

August 24, 2010

ARCA featured in La Repubblica

ARCA was featured in an article in Italy's leading national newspaper, La Repubblica, on 23 August 2010. The article mentioned some of the statistics on art crime in Italy kept by the Carabinieri Division for the Protection of Cultural Heritage. The Carabinieri TPC, as it is known, is the world's oldest and strongest art police unit, having been founded in 1969, and with a 300-plus strong force. They run the world's largest database on stolen art, containing over 3 million items, and have by far the best recovery rate of any of the world's police. In 2009 alone the Carabinieri TPC reported 13,219 artworks stolen in Italy (a significant decrease from the approximately 30,000 objects reported stolen as recently as 2001). In 2009 the TPC questioned 1220 people suspected of involvement in art crime, arrested 45, and recovered an astounding 19,043 stolen artworks.

The Carabinieri TPC were honored with the 2009 ARCA Award for Lifetime Achievement in Defense of Art, and were featured in a BBC Radio Four documentary which ran earlier this summer. In that documentary the Carabinieri reiterated that art crime is linked to the drug and arms trades and even terrorism, and highlighted the fact that most art crime involves organized crime, and therefore is something to be taken very seriously indeed.

December 8, 2009

US Justice Department & Central Bureau of Interpol Rate Art Crime Third Highest-Grossing Criminal Trade and Links It To Organized Crime

Statistics on art crime are unfortunately few and generally inaccurate. The reasons for this are detailed in ARCA's book, Art & Crime, and come down to a variety of factors.
  1. At a local level, most police are told to file stolen art with general stolen goods. This means that art thefts are lost among stolen property files and only those unusual or far-sighted police who set art thefts aside for filing, or choose to send files on to Interpol or national art police will be filed as art thefts, and can therefore be studied and constitute a portion of the national statistics.
  2. The legitimate market dollar value of artworks is a nebulous concept. One day a painting could be worth one million, another day two, another day seven-hundred thousand. It all depends on the stock market, the perceived demand of the art market for the object in question, the whims of a handful of individual collectors and museums. So to say that an artwork is worth X amount of money is untrue--it can only be stated that at one time this artwork, or a similar one, sold for X amount of money, and that this is the current best guess as to its value. Therefore it is useful only in terms of situating art crime at a general hierarchical level, and getting people to take it seriously.
  3. We know that reported art crimes represent only a fraction of the total number, the tip of the iceberg. Antiquities looted from the earth or the sea will only be discovered by happenstance, should an archaeologist or policeman happen upon a looted tomb in the wilderness, for instance. Even then, there is no way of knowing what was in the tomb to begin with, which is now stolen. Much fine art theft goes unreported, by museums which do not want to show their insecurity, by collectors who did not declare all of their collection to avoid luxury tax, by libraries or churches or archives that might not realize what is missing.
While the study of art crime is, necessarily, at this point more anecdotal than scientific, due to the poor, incomplete, and often inaccessible statistics, the major police forces agree on the extent and severity of art crime, and its links to Organized Crime, which make it a crime to take very seriously, indeed.

In ARCA's many projects and conferences, those with whom we have worked have conveyed the fact that art crime is the third-highest-grossing criminal trade, behind only drugs and arms, and have underlined with countless examples the links with Organized Crime since 1960. Organized Crime, which includes but is not limited to major Mafias (it also includes any group of three or more individuals working together in a diverse array of criminal enterprises for long-term collective goals), is responsible for some activity in the life of the crime. This is least often the theft or looting itself, which is done by mercenary burglars or local tomb raiders. But syndicates have the international networks necessary to take stolen objects off the hands of the thieves, smuggle them abroad, launder them, and sell them on. Because of this, art crime funds all of Organized Crime's other activities, from the drug and arms trade to terrorism.

Individuals from the major world art police have quoted these facts repeatedly, as have art criminals, lawyers, security staff, criminologists and more. But it is difficult to find published, publicly available statements to back this up. For anyone looking for a good, reliable source to cite when quoting information about art crime as the third-highest-grossing criminal trade, and the involvement of Organized Crime, need look no further than the US Department of Justice and the US Central Bureau of Interpol:


Cultural Property Crimes Program
The annual dollar value of art and cultural property theft is exceeded only by the trafficking in illicit narcotics and arms. The illegal trade of works of art and cultural property is as dangerous as these crimes. The criminal networks that traffic in the illicit sale of Works of Art and Cultural Property are often times the same circles that deal in illegal drug, arms dealing, and other illegal transactions. It has also been found recently that many insurgent and terrorist groups fund their operations through the sales and trade of stolen Works of Art and Cultural Property.