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Showing posts with label criminal investigation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label criminal investigation. Show all posts

July 13, 2019

Quando, Dove, Da Chi e a Quale Prezzo


When, Where, From Who and At What Price...

Demonstrating, once again, how important observation skills (and patience) are in following up on illicitly trafficked material, an observant officer within the Palermo unit of Italy's Comando Carabinieri per la Tutela del Patrimonio has been able to identify a remarkable Attic Red-Figure Column Krater dating back to the 5th century BCE trafficked clandestinely. Ironically though, the officer's success did not come about by the monitoring of online sellers of objects, as misrepresented in numerous Italian language articles today, but rather by qualitative observation and awareness of the similarities in purchasing patterns buyers of such objects sometimes exhibit. 

The large ceramic vessel, used for mixing water and wine, depicts a female playing a double aulos (diaulos), an an ancient Greek wind instrument.  She is standing between two male figures, each wrapped in a himation around the lower portion of their bodies while reclining languidly upon klines.  On the reverse side of the vase, the iconography depicts three additional standing youths, each of whom is mantled in a red himation, one of whom is leaning heavily on his walking stick.


After the officer notated the suspicious vase, the antiquity was geolocated to a prestigious villa in Aci Castello, twenty minutes by car from Catania.  On requesting a search warrant, later approved by the Public Prosecutor's office, the object was seized and an individual unnamed by the prosecutor's office has been placed under investigation for having received stolen goods.

This interesting, yet time consuming, econometric approach to investigations demonstrates, once again, how the internet constitutes not only the conduit for selling illicit material, but also at times can be a useful environment for the recovery of illicit antiquities.

Using emergent web intelligence, i.e., determining buyer behavioral commonalities, the Carabinieri has found an unusual information gathering opportunity which facilitated the object's identification after the object had been sold.  This in turn will hopefully lead to officer's identifying those who deal in and sell illegally excavated objects on to others. 

By:  Lynda Albertson

January 23, 2017

Operation Pandora - When multinational law enforcement agents collaborate, they are a force to be reckoned with.


A simple run down.

92 new investigations were initiated between October and November 2016 in which Europol joined forces with law enforcement authorities from 18 EU and non EU countries, including:

Austria
Belgium
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Bulgaria
Croatia
Cyprus
Germany
Greece
Italy
Malta
the Netherlands
Poland
Portugal
Romania
Serbia
Spain
Switzerland
United Kingdom

Led by Cypriot and Spanish police, Operation Pandora aimed at dismantling criminal networks involved in cultural theft and exploitation, and identify potential links to other criminal activities. 

The joint investigations focused on cultural spoliation, both underwater and on land, and the illicit trafficking of cultural goods, with a particular emphasis on conflict countries.  

From its operational coordination centre in the Hague, Europol provided operational and analytical support 24/7 and facilitated the information exchange between law enforcement and supporting authorities.

Throughout the operation INTERPOL cross-checked objects against their stolen works of art database. The WCO facilitated communications and cooperation between law enforcement and concerned customs administrations and UNESCO contributed by providing training materials and offering recommendations to the participating countries.

http://www.thessnews.gr/article/9725/ekrybe-marmarini-epitymbia-stili-narkotika-mesa-sto-spiti-tou-foto





During which, 3561 works of art and cultural goods were seized, almost half of which were archaeological objects; 500 archaeological objects were seized in Murcia, Spain, of which 19 were stolen in 2014 from the Museo de Arqueológia
in the southern Spanish city of Murcia. Cypriot police seized 1.383 antiquities and 13 metal detectors during 44 searches.  An additional 40 objects were found at the Post Office in in port city of Larnaca.

Additional objects mentioned in the police briefing include a marble Ottoman tombstone,  and a post-Byzantine-era icon depicting Saint George with two  saints, two Byzantine-period artefacts (one ring and one coin). 

During investigations of suspicious online advertisements 400+ coins from different periods were seized;

In total, 75 individuals have been arrested.

ARCA spoke with Michael Will of EUROPOL's O26 Focal Point Furtum about the arrests and he said

"Again the intelligence led  joint action on Cultcrime was another huge success. The impressive number of arrests and seizures all over Europe shows that the approach  of complementary cooperation between Law Enforcement Agencies of the key countries supported by powerful agencies and associations like Europol, Interpol, UNESCO and WCO is working better and better."

We agree!


December 12, 2013

Bojan Dobovšek and Boštjan Slak on "Criminal Inspectors and Art Crime Investigation in Slovenia" in the Fall 2013 issue of ARCA's Journal of Art Crime


Bojan Dobovšek and Boštjan Slak write on "Criminal Inspectors and Art Crime Investigation in Slovenia" in the Fall 2013 issue of The Journal of Art Crime. This is the academic article's abstract:
The aim of the paper is to present some presumptions about the criminal investigation of art and historical heritage-related crimes. Because credible literature on art crime investigation is rare, especially with clear empirical data, we have decided to survey Slovenian investigators about their opinions and experience relating to art crimes. Slovenian investigators rarely come across art crime cases, even in connection with other types of crime. Our survey showed that Slovenian criminal investigators are indifferent regarding keenness for art-related criminal cases investigation-: cases are not very “desirable” but also they are not “non-desirable.” In addition, investigators do not agree that they have enough knowledge about art-related crime. The most positively evaluated was cooperation with other instructions (like INTERPOL). The study results also showed that more dedication should be devoted to education about investigating art crimes; especially prosecutors and judges lack such knowledge. Some problems and experiences about academic research methods are also debated in the paper, therefore providing some help to future researchers. Our pilot study has shown that (at least in Slovenia) qualitative research methods would be more suitable. However the findings of our research are still useful to those who develop strategies for investigating art-related crimes, and for further academic research.
From the introduction:
Art crimes are most often defined as “criminally punishable acts that involve works of art” (Conklin, 1994, p. 3). Passas & Proulx (2011, p. 52), are more detailed: “... subsumed under the rubric of art crime are such activities as diverse as art thefts and confiscations, vandalism, faked and forged art, illicit excavation and export of antiquities and other archaeological material.” We list these definitions of art crime simply because most countries also penalize criminal acts against art and cultural heritage in such a broad sense. Without a doubt, such broadness limits the research of art crime, as individual acts are lost in the statistics of property crime, under which art crime falls. One can only examine the rough numbers of the frequency with which art crime occurs per year. Only in notorious cases do we have more data, but the majority of data remains uncollectable1 or, as is the case in Slovenia, it isn’t consistent, as determined by Vučko (2012) in her study. She noticed that there are severe discrepancies between annual data about art crime that the General Police Directorate gives to the public, to researchers, and that which was published elsewhere (ibid). Dobovšek, Charney, & Vučko (2009) see one of the reasons why criminologists and criminalists aren’t keen on empirical studies of art crime, in the fact that even though there are extensive art crime databases kept by INTERPOL, the FBI, and private organizations, these are sometimes hard to access. Moreover, because of social and, mainly legal, specifications of different countries, the available data only enables country-by-country analysis (Durney & Proulx, 2011).
Bojan Dobovšek is Associate Professor and Vice-Dean of the Faculty of Criminal Justice and Security, University of Maribor, Slovenia. Boštjan Slak is a postgraduate student at the Faculty of Criminal Justice and Security, University of Maribor, Slovenia. 

Design for this issue and all issues of The Journal of Art Crime is the work of Urška Charney. Here's a link to ARCA's website on The Journal of Art Crime (includes Table of Contents for previous issues).