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Showing posts with label illicit trafficking. Show all posts
Showing posts with label illicit trafficking. Show all posts

March 11, 2024

The wacky illicit world of one Ushabti of the Pharaoh Taharqa

The Cultural Heritage Brigade of Spain's Policía Nacional have completed an investigation into a rare, illicitly trafficked, ushabti. The statuette, holding traditional Egyptian agricultural implements, reproduces the text of Chapter 6 of the Book of the Dead and would have been placed in the tomb of the deceased.  Property of the Republic of the Sudan, the funerary figurine was sold to the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden in the Netherlands by "a Catalan antiques dealer". 

Although unnamed in today's press release, the Spanish police did provide some interesting details regarding the sales transaction for this illicit object, which, in turn, also help us to identify who the unnamed dealer in question is.  

Today's press statement indicates that the Spanish investigation began when the Dutch National Polite forwarded their colleagues in Spain a complaint for aggravated fraud that had been filed in the Netherlands by the director of the museum in Leiden regarding their purchase of a suspect ushabti for Pharaoh Taharqa, the 4th king of the 25th Dynasty of Egypt and the Qore of the Kingdom of Kush from 690 to 664 BCE. 

The press release went on to say that "the complaint stated that an antiques dealer, responsible for an antiques establishment in Barcelona, ​​had sold a sculpture of Sudanese origin to the Dutch museum for 100,000 euros" and that the sales transaction was facilitated using false provenance documentation which was presented to provide a cover to the artefact's illicit origin.  Based on the foregoing, the museum then filed their complaint with the Dutch national authorities and were seeking the return of their purchase price.

To facilitate the sale, the police confirmed that the dealer in question had provided the museum with a digital copy of a handwritten document purportedly dating to May 27, 1967 which, at face value, appeared to have been written by an employee of the Sudanese government.  This document also appeared to attest to the fact that the artefact had left the Sudan for London sometime between 1930 and 1940.  

After careful review of this document, which included follow-up examination involving individuals affiliated with the Embassy of the Republic of Sudan in Spain,, as well as with heritage experts specialising in the illicit trafficking of Egyptian material circulating within the ancient art market, the paperwork provided was determined to be a false attestation.  This technique is sometimes used by sellers of illicit material to increase verisimilitude to a work of fiction through the invention and insertion of details into an object's documentation which are presented as factual, when they are not.

Reviewing this document it was determined that the paperwork presented by the dealer to legitimise this object's circulation contained several discrepancies. The most blatant error on the part of the fraudster(s) was that the forged document referenced Sudan's "Ministry of Archeology", a departmental name that has never existed in this African country.  

In 1967 the competent authority tasked with the protection of cultural heritage in the Sudan was the Sudanese Antiquities Service, abbreviated as the SAS (now the National Corporation for Antiquities & Museums - NCAM).  In 1939 the SAS was linked to the Ministry of Education, and by 1953 to the Ministry of Al Maref.  In addition to the above, the signatory of the falsified attestation referred to himself with the title of "general director" for the aforementioned nonexistent ministry.  And while this named individual does match to a person previously affiliated with the government of Sudan, this person never held a position with this title.  Likewise,  their documented signature on official records differs from the one signed and given to the museum substantiating the objects departure from the country.

During this investigation it was also determined that the artefact was one of several artefacts believed to have been stolen from the Gebel Barkal Museum situated on the right (north) bank of the Nile on the SW edge of modern Karima, Sudan which occurred between 2000 and 2003.

The complaint filed by the National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden, concluded that based on the evidence of fraud they were seeking a refund of the purchase price from the Catalan dealer.  The Spanish police press report indicates that the person under investigation, if found guilty, would be responsible for a crime of aggravated fraud by involving assets of artistic, historical and cultural heritage, as well as for exceeding the fraud of 50,000 euros for the object's sale to the Dutch museum. 

But just who is the unnamed Catalan dealer? 

Matching the partial photograph of the ushabti for Pharaoh Taharqa depicted on Spain's press release lead me to a more complete rendering of the object on the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden's accession record.  That record indicates that the Dutch museum purchased the sculpture in 2014 via Spain but not much else in the way of detail on its official collection history.  That same year, Jaume Bagot, of J. Bagot Arqueología, a problematic Catalan dealer who has been mentioned frequently on ARCA's blog, was identified as having brought a 25th Dynasty ushabti of similar proportions to Brussels for the 2014 BRAFA art fair.  Unfortunately, the first Pinterest photo of that event wasn't clear enough to confirm if Bagot's artefact was the one the museum had purchased. 

Going back to Bagot's website we can find a "sold" notice for a Ushabti of the Pharaoh Taharqa. 


The provenance for this piece is listed as follows:

‘Family Babeker, Sudan. In Europe since 1930. Family C., Barcelona, prior 1970.’


This seemed to match to the export date on paperwork the Spanish authorities had, but I still wanted to ensure that I had the right artefact and the right doggy documents presenting dealer, before naming him, so I dug a bit deeper.  I then came across an article by Alain Truong which tells us more regarding the provenance of Bagot's 2014 ushabti. That article listed the collection history for the Spanish dealer's ushabti as:


Provenance:  The family of M. Mustafa Abdalla Babeker, Khartoum, Sudan, 1917 - 1930. Collection of Don C. Bes, 1930. Private European collection, 1940. From the archaeological work at the pyramid of Taharqa, the royal necropolis of Nuri, Nubia.


To be 100 percent certain the objects were a match, I then took the image from J. Bagot Arqueología sales record with the black background and overlayed it with the one attached to the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden accession record.  Without a doubt, the two images reflect an object of the same size and proportion and depict the same object. 

It should be noted that this is not the only "Babeker" provenance artefact sold by Bagot.  In 2017 the Catalan dealer brought another ushabti to Brafa, this one of the King Senkamanisken, the third successor of Taharqa, who likewise was a king buried at Nuri (Sudan) and low and behold it too had the same purported provenance.  Did Bagot use the same attestation letter provided to the Dutch museum? 

So with that, I leave you with a pressing question.  To those of you out there who have handled other objects with Mr. Babeker as your assumed touch stone of pristine provenance, what say you? Any comments from Christie's, or Christie's again or  Sotheby's or Axel Vervoordt or anyone else who has bought or sold a Taharqa or a Senkamanisken ushabti since the early 2000s?  

Care to share your details with the Spanish authorities?  

By: Lynda Albertson

January 21, 2024

Spanish Police Recover 71 Historical Artefacts and Arrest 6 of 10 members of an Art Trafficking Ring


This week the Spanish newspaper El Pais reported on an important victory by the Brigada de Patrimonio Histórico de la Policía Judicial in the recovery of 71 artefacts from the Nasrid, Caliphal, Visigoth, and Renaissance periods and the arrest of a group of individuals now facing varying charges for their individual roles in the circulation of illicit artefacts. The historic pieces recovered, many of which were architectural elements, include stone capitals and columns, plasterwork arches, Islamic beams, an Arab funerary stele, and a partial arrocabe, (an ornament in the form of a frieze at the top border of walls), as well as several sculptures and four Visigoth belt brooches.

The genesis of this Spanish investigation can be traced back to a routine documentation check conducted at a booth during the 2021 Feriarte art fair in Madrid. During this examination, law enforcement officers engaged with the seller, raising inquiries about the provenance and collecting history of a particularly suspicious stone capital.

This object dated to the Emirate of Granada, also known as the Nasrid Kingdom of Granada, the medieval Islamic state that ruled the southern Iberian Peninsula from the 13th to the 15th century.  Established in 1238 after the fall of the Almohad Caliphate, the Nasrid dynasty successfully maintained its independence amidst the Christian Reconquista and is renowned for having fostered a vibrant society characterised by intricate architecture, advanced scholarship, and a rich blend of Islamic, Christian, and Jewish influences, the most important of which is the iconic Alhambra palace complex. 

A review of the capital's paperwork shed important light on a series of irregularities, which, upon further investigation.  The invoice showed that it had been acquired, along with two other capitals, in an antiques establishment in Granada, but had no invoice number and the VAT amount had not been broken down.  This turned out to be the first lead that allowed officers to identify the group of individuals responsible for the circulation and laundering of similar pedigreed artefacts into the ancient art market via Granada, to Barcelona, as well as on to Valencia and Madrid.

Many of these pieces utilised similar false attestations of ownership claiming that the object on offer had  originated from a family collection which could be traced back to an important restorer who worked on the Alhambra two centuries ago.  The paperwork provided also claimed that the cultural property in question had been part of the family's private collection prior to 1985, the year that Law 16/1985 established a new legal framework for the protection, enhancement and transmission to future generations of the Spanish Historical Heritage.  


Following this investigative period, concrete evidence leads to the filing of charges against ten individuals who are alleged to have been involved in this criminal network. Notably, law enforcement have now apprehended five individuals in Granada as well as one antiquities dealer operating in the city of Barcelona.  Four additional implicated members of the same Granada-based family remain at large as some of them are believed to hold Brazilian nationality and were outside the country at the time arrest warrants were executed. 

According to the police, the leaders of the operation were three siblings from Granada, who, operating an antiques business in the city, facilitated the fabrication of documentary evidence which then allowed the network to introduce the illicit pieces into the legal market via their contact in Barcelona, before circulating onward. 

August 13, 2023

Thoughts on the confessions of Cosa Nostra boss Matteo Messina Denaro during his February interrogation

A man of many "pezzini"

As mentioned in an earlier ARCA blog post this week, Matteo Messina Denaro, the former fugutive Cosa Nostra boss, was interrogated on February 13, 2023 for almost two hours at a maximum security prison in Italy.  There, the crime boss fielded many  questions, and sometimes duelled with Palermo prosecutor Maurizio De Lucia and deputy prosecutor Paolo Guido when their questions struck too close to home.   

According to the official transcript of their exchange, which covers 69 printed pages and is marked in several places with the handwritten word “omissis”, (used to mark redactions in the interrogation), the Cosa Nostra boss, curated his words carefully.  In many cases he only only incriminated himself verbally in specific areas where there was already overwhelming evidence of specific and proven actions.  In other instances, he obliquely ignored questions he didn't want to answer, while seemingly going off on tangents, as if he wanted his say on key subjects to be memorialised so that others might read and interpret his statements later. 

Speaking to the two magistrates, Messino Denaro again distanced himself from the murder of Giuseppe Di Matteo.  Repeating what he had previously told investigating Judge Alfredo Montaldo, who had questioned him in relation to another trial in which he is accused of attempted extortion.  The boss admitted to prosecutors De Lucia and Guido that he played a role in the 12 year old's kidnapping on November 23, 1993 and made it clear that seizing the child was a volley designed to coerce the father, Cosa Nostra informant Santino Di Matteo, into retracting statements given to the Anti-Mafia District Directorate (DDA) of Palermo.

Giuseppe was escorted out of horse stables in Villabate by four mafiosi dressed as policemen.  His kidnappers had promised him that they were bringing him to see his father.  Once under their control, the child was held hostage for a total of 779 days in various locations between the provinces of Palermo, Trapani, and Agrigento.  

Ironically, at one point the boy was taken, hooded and locked in the trunk of a car, to a farmhouse in Campobello di Mazara, the same village where Messina Denaro was  found to be hiding at the time of his January 16, 2023 capture.  After years as a hostage, and increasingly becoming a liability to his captors, Giuseppe was strangled to death on January 11, 1996 in the Giambascio countryside outside Palermo. His body was then dissolved in acid. 

Matteo Messina Denaro was involved in the massacres of 1993,
including this one in Florence in via Georgofili

In July of this year, the Caltanissetta court of appeal confirmed Matteo Messina Denaro's life sentence for his role in dozens of murders including Giuseppe's.  The others include: 

  • The May 23, 1992 bombing which killed anti-Mafia magistrate Giovanni Falcone, his wife, and three officers of their police escort as their cars passed near the small town of Capaci; 
  • The July 19, 1992 bombing in Via Mariano D'Amelio (Palermo) which killed Judge Paolo Borsellino and five members of his security detail; 
  • The 1993 bombings carried out at art and religious sites in Milan, Florence and Rome that killed 10 people and injured 40 others: 

During his interrogation Matteo Messina Denaro denied being involved in the trafficking in drugs, but openly admitted to prosecutors other things they already knew and had confirmed, such as having regularly passed pizzinu (small piece of paper, containing sometimes coded messages) with convicted Cosa Nostra “boss of bosses” Bernardo Provenzano, who once headed the Mafia's powerful Clan dei Corleonesi. 

In these messages, sent while both men were already fugitives from justice, Messina Denaro admitted that the pair asked one another for favours, but his admission of his relation with Provenzano during this interrogation wasn't revelatory.  Investigators already had undeniable proof of the pair's communication in the form of ten pizzini, sent between 2003 and 2006, which agents had recovered in Provenzano's hideout when he was captured in Montagna dei Cavalli near Corleone on April 11, 2006. 

The Farm Hideout of Bernardo Provenzano

One of those messages is practically a testament of fealty by Messina Denaro to Provenzano and spoke with deference to the crime boss saying:

"Lei è sempre nel mio cuore e nei miei pensieri, se ha bisogno di qualcosa da me è superfluo dire che sono a sua completa disposizione e sempre lo sarò. La prego di stare sempre molto attento, le voglio troppo bene".  

In another, writing as his nephew "Alessio," Messina Denaro wrote to his Uncle Bernardo saying:

"I know the rules and I respect them, the proof that I know the rules and that I'm respecting lies precisely in the fact that I'm turning to you to fix this unpleasant affair, this for me is respecting the rules.  You tells me that money in life isn't everything and that there are good things that money doesn't can buy. I totally agree with you, because I have always thought that one can be a man without a lira and one can be full of money and be mud." 

Offering both a mundane and fascinating image of himself on the lam, a substantial part of the Corleonese godfather's interrogation statements focus on the time period in his life immediately leading up to his capture.  Perhaps because by this period he understood that the clock was ticking and understanding that a) he couldn't hide forever and b) he needed help from others given his declining health.  

Some of his statements appear to be attempts to exonerate some of those individuals, who have been arrested on suspicion of having helped the Cosa Nostra boss during his illness, including statements in defence of Doctor Alfonso Tumbarello, whom Messina Denaro told the magistrates: 

"knows nothing."

Other individuals close to the boos faired less well during the Messina Denaro's ramblings.  

When speaking about undergoing medical care in Palermo under the false name of Andrea Bonafede, as an outpatient at the multi-specilaity hospital La Maddalena, Messina Denaro described several of the steps he needed in order to obtain false identity documents, knowing that he could not undergo chemotherapy and medical treatment in the state's medical institution directly under his own name. 

In this part of the interview Messina Denaro stated:

"I had a friendship with Andrea Bonafede, but a remote friendship because his father worked for us, for my father and then my father was a friend of his uncle, he had a another uncle suspected mafia convicted of mafia".

Investigators contend that in addition to lending his name, Bonafede received 20,000 euros from the Matteo Messina Denaro to buy a house in western Sicily that would serve as one of the fugitive's hideouts.

Messina Denaro also told the magistrates about a second assumed identity, used in the city of Campobello di Mazara, the Sicilian town that sheltered him.  Here he was known under the pseudonym “Francesco”, a Palermitan man who purportedly relocated from the city to the smaller town while caring for his ailing mother and two elderly aunts.  

Living dual identities while hiding in plain site within the Campobello community, Messina Denaro also admitted that in addition to travelling back and forth to the Palermo hospital for treatment, either alone or with an escort, he had openly visited Campobello's bakeries, greengrocers, and supermarkets.  He also played poker and eat in  local restaurants. Again, nothing extremely revelatory, as receipts and objects found in his hiding places confirm some of the his admitted activities. 

What is more of interest to readers of ARCA's Art Crime blog were the from-the-horse's-mouth affirmations made during this hour and forty minute interrogation that confirm directly from the source that Matteo Messina Denaro's family, and that of his father, Francesco Messina Denaro, capo mandamento in Castelvetrano and head of the mafia commission of the Trapani region, sustained their livelihoods, to some extent, by the proceeds of antiquities crimes.

Messina Denaro's verbal admissions concretise a written statement previously attributed to him, which was already mentioned in an article published in 2009 by Rino Giacalone for Antimafia Duemila.  In that article, the journalist refers to an intercepted "pizzini" written by Messina Denaro where the crime boss wrote almost word for word, what he admitted to during this interrogation.  

"With the trafficking of works of art we support our family."

Francesco Messina Denaro as readers of ARCA's blog may recall was already believed to have been behind the theft of the famous Efebo of Selinunte, a 5th century BCE statue of Dionysius Iachos, stolen on October 30, 1962 and recovered in 1968 through the help of Rodolfo Siviero. 


Matteo Messina Denaro was verbose when speaking to his dead father's and the family's involvement in the illicit antiquities trade.  He also mentions that his family bought from everyone and laundered antiquities illegally removed from Sicily via Switzerland, in an enterprise which supporting some 30 members of his family, including some who were incarcerated and others like himself who were on the run.  But the boss was far more laconic when asked directly if he knew Castelvetrano ancient art dealer Gianfranco Becchina.  In response to the PM's query in this regard, he answered: 

"lo conosco perché è un paesano mio, a prescindere, anche senza i beni... i pezzi archeologici, lo conosco lo stesso,  perché siamo paesani."

In October 2018, following a formal request by the Deputy Prosecutor for the District Anti-Mafia Directorate Carlo Marzella, preliminary reexamination judge of of the Court of Palermo, Antonella Consiglio, dismissed the charge of mafia association against Becchina citing in her decision that the accusations used for the basis of the charge, made originally via testimonies given by verbose mafia defector Vincenzo Calcara, had been deemed "unreliable". 

Back in 1992, Calcara, and now deceased former drug dealer Rosario Spatola,  incriminated Gianfranco Becchina for alleged association with the Campobello di Mazara and Castelvetrano clans, implying that there was a gang affiliate active in Switzerland whose role it was to sell ancient artefacts originating from the mab's black market.  At the time of his testimony, much of Calcara's information was discounted as many were skeptical that he had actual knowledge of the facts he represented or whether he invented things for his own benefit.

Matteo Messina Denaro's statements during his February interrogation however confirm that a network of criminals funnelled numerous illicit antiquities from Sicily through the art market in Switzerland, which flowed onward, into world museums.  But the mafia boss stopped short however, on confirming, by name, whose hands, these works of ancient art passed through. 

Like Provenzano before him, Matteo Messina Denaro, at least for now, seems to be determined to be his own custodian of many secrets, especially those which might openly implicate living individuals, who have direct or indirect relationships with the Cosa boss and result in their arrest and/or convictions.  Facing a terminal illness, Messina Denaro's statements are well-guarded, and for the most part his scant confessions during the interrogation seem wholly performative.  

Like so many mobsters before him, it seems that he plans to carry most of the Cosa Nostra's bloody business dealings with him to his grave. 

By:  Lynda Albertson

January 20, 2023

Ceremony on the return of 58 antiquities to Italy

On Monday, January 23, 2023, at 1 pm in Rome, a formal ceremony will be held regarding the return to Italy, from the United States, of 58 antiquities valued at nearly $19 million.  This event will be held at the Ministry of Culture's Sala Spadolini inside the Consiglio Nazionale al Collegio Romano.

The objects returned are the direct result of investigations in the United States regarding international traffickers of antiquities conducted by the Antiquities Trafficking Unit at the District Attorney's Office in New York in Manhattan, in collaboration with the Comando Carabinieri Tutela Patrimonio Culturale (TPC).  

Present for the event will be the Italy's Minister of Culture, Gennaro Sangiuliano,  the Deputy Prosecutor of the Republic at the Court of Rome, Angelantonio Racanelli; the Commander of the Carabinieri TPC, General B. Vincenzo Molinese; and New York Assistant District Attorney Col. Matthew Bogdanos. 

This event will be direct streamed via the YouTube channel of Italy's Ministry of Culture for those who wish to attend the ceremony digitally. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-RcYKNBHtk&ab_channel=MiC_Italia

Marble head of Athena, ca. 200 BCE

In discussing these returns in a press release issued by the New York County District Attorney's Office, the New York authorities stated that these artefacts had been trafficked by Giacomo Medici, Giovanni Franco Becchina, Pasquale Camera and Edoardo Almagiá.  Twenty one of the pieces had been seized from the Metropolitan Museum of Art while the other thirty-seven were recovered from a New York collector and an antiquities dealer.

When speaking of these objects homecoming to Italy, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin L. Bragg, Jr., was quoted as saying:

“These 58 pieces represent thousands of years of rich history, yet traffickers throughout Italy utilised looters to steal these items and to line their own pockets. For far too long, they have sat in museums, homes, and galleries that had no rightful claim to their ownership.”  

Discussing the recent Italian restitutions Bragg also addressed the difficulty and time needed to work these complicated cultural property crime cases stating:

“Exposing these schemes takes years of diligent and difficult investigative work, and I applaud our team of prosecutors and analysts, who in coordination with our law enforcement partners, are continuing to make unparalleled progress in returning stolen antiquities.”  

Assistant US District Attorney Col. Matthew Bogdanos, who heads up the Manhattan Office's Antiquities Trafficking Unit, and who will be present at Monday's ceremony, has often related his department's work to an axiom of jurisprudence “that justice should not only be done, but should manifestly and undoubtedly be seen to be done.” R v. Sussex Justices, ex parte McCarthy, 1 KB 256, 259 (1924).  Something this publicly streamable restitution will undoubtedly demonstrate.  

Each of these objects should be viewed as a reminder to collectors, dealers, and art institutions, that the US authorities treat stolen cultural property seriously and public prosecutors continue to pursue the rightful return of plundered goods.

January 17, 2023

Are there connections to Becchina enterprises? Questions surrounding the enterprise of Matteo Messina Denaro's fiancheggiatore, Giovanni Luppino

Police standing watch outside Messino Denaro's
residence in Campobello di Mazara

Following the arrest of fugitive mafia super boss Matteo Messina Denaro, there are some interesting avenues worth exploring regarding the diversification of mafia holdings. One of which may, or may not, strike close to home with regards to the  economic activities of 83-year-old former antiquities dealer Gianfranco Becchina in his later years.  Messina Denaro was captured yesterday after 30 years on the run.

Back in May 2022 Italy's Direzione Investigativa Antimafia, the country's anti-mafia investigation division, issued a confirmation confiscation decree on Gianfranco Becchina's property holdings, based upon a request from the Public Prosecutor's Office of Palermo.  As per that decree, the DIA's action finalised the confiscation of a significant portion of Becchina's movable, real estate and corporate assets "attributable to a well-known international trader of works of art art and artefacts of historical-archaeological value suspected of links with the mafia gangs, in particular in the province of Trapani." While the DIA's final seizure announcement didn't name Becchina as the businessman living in Castelvetrano, whose assets were seized, the regional and National newspapers did.   

But back to yesterday's arrest of the mafia crime boss

According to searches coordinated by the Deputy Prosecutor Paolo Guido, fugitive Matteo Messina Denaro had been staying, at least for the most recent period of his time on the run, at a residence located on a secluded street, Vicolo San Vito, in the heart of Campobello di Mazara.  This is the same town where his driver and fiancheggiatore (flanker), Giovanni Luppino, also resided.  Campobello di Mazara, in the province of Trapani, is a short 7.7 km from Castelvetrano where Gianfranco Becchina resides and where Messina Denaro was born in 1962 building an empire of Cosa Nostra controlled business enterprises which included waste disposal, wind energy, retail and agricultural sectors. 

A municipality in a strategic position, Campobello di Mazara is a town of 11 thousand inhabitants closely rooted to the mafia, with some residents in these days even lamenting his arrest, saying the Trapani cosca put food on the tables. The city is also home to Alfonso Tumbarello, the physician now under investigation for having treated Andrea Bonafede, alias Matteo Messina Denaro, who is also the doctor of the real Andrea Bonafede. Tumbarello, it is reported wrote prescriptions in Bonafede's name for the cosa nostra boss.

It is also home to mafia boss Francesco Luppino and loyalist Raffaele Urso, AKA Cinuzzo.  Wire interceptions confirmed that Luppino, arrested in September 2022, was in close contact with Messina Denaro for land management.  While Urso, the boss's ambassador to business in Italy's capital, was arrested in April 2018, and sentenced to 18 years and 4 months in prison for his involvement in the Trapani clan.  

Other interesting Campobello di Mazara residents include the former city councillor, Calogero Jonn Luppino, who had 6 million euros in assets seized for mafia association, including 10 companies and related business complexes, 6 parcels of land, 14 bank accounts, 1 motor vehicle, 1 racehorse, cash, and gold bars.  That Luppino was involved in mafia rackets and extortion which forced various businesses in the Trapani area to install gambling devices in their businesses or risk threatening retaliation.  

Even the city's former mayor Ciro Caravà, was indicted in 2012 for mafia association as part of the Campus Belli anti-mafia operation.  Following his arrest the Municipality was dissolved for mafia infiltration on July 27, 2012.  Strangely, after  Caravà's sentence was overturned and he was released from custody, he died by suffocation, at age 58, purportedly trying to swallow a piece of bread. 

All this to say that Campobello di Mazara is not your typical bucolic Sicilian town, making it not at all surprising that this boss was able to hide in plain site here. 

But who is Giovanni Luppino, aside from being Messina Denero's driver?  

This Luppino is not believed to be a relation to  Messina Denaro loyalist Franco Luppino.  Nor, it is claimed, is he a relation to an olive oil producer of the same name.  However, the driver, Giovanni Luppino also worked in the olive oil biz and reportedly had storage warehouses in Campobello di Mazara and Castelvetrano and worked with wholesalers buyers from the Bay of Naples as well as local growers of Nocellara del Belìce olives, a protected denomination of origin (PDO) olive varietal, consumed as table olives and used for the production of extra-virgin oil.

If this olive sounds familiar to ARCA's blog readers it is because Gianfranco Becchina also invested in this money-making olive.   Beginning in 1989, one of Becchina's companies produced his own Nocellara del Belìce olive oil, harvested from the olive trees on Tenuta Pignatelli, a one-hundred-acre expanse of olive groves and lemon trees with a historic main villa from the early 1800s on the outskirts of Castelvetrano, once owned by the Princess Pignatelli of Spain.  

Sold in upscale boutiques, Becchina's olive oil was marketed to USA-based customers for an eye-popping $36 a bottle and is known to have medalled in the New York International Olive Oil Competition over the course of three years, 2018, 2019, and 2021.  

Patrizia Messina Denaro - Sister of the Boss, and Capodonna representative of the Castelvetrano, family also had an olive-oil company belonging to her and her husband impounded.

Nocellara del Belìce olives are cultivated in a fertile area which encompasses the municipalities of Castelvetrano, Campobello di Mazara, Partanna, Poggioreale, Salaparuta and Santa Ninfa, all towns in the province subject to the heavy influence of the Trapani mandamento of the Cosa Nostra.  With some 5,000 olive growers who produce this kind of olive, the province of Trapani in the west of Sicily is a lucrative agricultural market, known for its mafia infiltration, as well as an important stop in the seasonal labor cycle, with the majority of harvesters being sub-Saharan Africans who are all too often exploited, treated as human farming tools, no different than tractors. 

Whether there is a connection between the mafia boss, his driver the olive oil merchant, or the former antiquities dealer has not been proven. But what is known is that in November 2017 Italy's Anti-Mafia Investigative Directorate, through the Court of Trapani's penal and preventive measures section, filed a seizure order for all movable assets, including real estate and corporate enterprises attributable to Gianfranco Becchina on the basis of an order issued from the District Attorney of Palermo based upon investigations conducted by Italy's anti-mafia DIA, under the coordination of the Palermo Public Prosecutor's Office.  That order resulted in the seizure of not only Becchina's cement trade business, Atlas Cements Ltd., Demetra srl., and Becchina & company srl., but also his olive oil venture, Olio Verde srl.   

Much like antiquities, olive oil is a highly lucrative and diversified, income stream making it appealing to Italy’s organised-crime syndicates

Police data shows that there is a known and profitable agromafia active in Italy related to olive cultivation.  Data also shows that all of Italy’s major crime syndicates — the Neapolitan Camorra, ’Ndrangheta, and Cosa Nostra have profited from  farming investments.  

The economic importance of agriculture for mafia organisations like Messina Denero's can be deduced from the frequency of ongoing trials and the confiscation sentences of agricultural, or agro-industrial assets, in and around the province of Trapani.  Many of which have been tied to trials and seizure orders relating to  individuals found to have been associated with Messina Denaro or his enterprises. 

With respect to olives specifically, it has long been the common view that the Neapolitans control the distribution of olives and the olive oil market in Sicily, via a price fixing of sorts, tacitly condoned, if not formally agreed upon, between the Cosa Nostra and the Camorra.  And studies have shown that members of both organised crime organisations have profited from the selling of counterfeit extra virgin olive oil, controlling farmlands, price fixing, and in some cases labor exploitation.   

How important, olive holdings are to the mechanisations of Messina Denaro's Trapani cosca has never been publicly disclosed. But we do know that this syndicate's reach extends beyond the underworld and into diversified revenue streams, like Italy’s illicit antiquities trade and the very path our food travels before reaching our supermarket trolleys and our dinner tables.  

And with margins as high as 700 percent, profits from olive oil are higher than cocaine — making it an appealing channel for money laundering. 

November 2, 2022

A lighter than we had hoped [but not unanticipated] sentence for Subhash Kapoor

 

Arrested while on business in Cologne, Germany on October 30, 2011, after a years-long investigation code named Operation Hidden Idol that ultimately resulted in the issuance of an INTERPOL Red Notice, Subhash Kapoor, the former New York gallerist who once operated Art of the Past, has (at last) been convicted in Tamil Nadu's Kumbakonam court, in the first of several cases against him. 

Extradited from Germany to India, to face charges in a case registered in with the Udayarpalayam police station, Kapoor was handed over by the German authorities to the Idol Wing of the CID police in Chennai on July 13, 2012.  Appearing before the court the next day,  Kapoor pled not guilty to charges relating to the theft of idols from Varadaraja Perumal temple in the state's Ariyalur district.  

Afterward, he was remanded into judicial custody by the Judicial Magistrate, Jayankondam in Ariyalur, and would remain in custody for the next decade, held at Trichy Central Prison in Tiruchirapalli, Tamil Nadu, while his case proceeded through the judicial process.  While there, other idol theft cases piled up against him; in Vikramangalam, in Veeravanallur, in Palvoor and in Virudhachalam, as well as abroad in the United States and Germany.

Yesterday, the disgraced owner of the New York gallery, Art of the Past was found guilty and sentenced by Chief Judicial Magistrate D Shanmuga Priya under:

IPC penal code section 411 (dishonestly receiving stolen property) carrying with it a three year prison sentence plus a fine. 

IPC penal code section 413 (receives or deals in property which he knows or has reason to believe to be stolen property) carrying with it a three year prison sentence plus a fine. 

IPC penal code section 120 b (criminal conspiracy) carrying with it a seven year prison sentence plus a fine. *

Other co-conspirators in this case also had sentences handed down.

Sanjivi Asokan, AKA Sanjeevi Asokan, AKA Sanjeeve Asokan, received a two year sentence and fine for violation of IPC penal code section 465 (forgery), a two year sentence and fine for IPC penal code section 468 (forgery, for the purpose of cheating), a two year sentence and fine for IPC penal code section 471 (use of forged material) a one year sentence and fine for IPC penal code section 414 (concealing or disposing of stolen property), and a seven year sentence and fine for IPC penal code section 120 b (criminal conspiracy).*

Marichamy received a seven year sentence and fine for violation of IPC penal code section 457 (lurking house trespass by night, or house-breaking by night), a three year sentence and fine for IPC penal code section 380 (theft of a building) and a seven year sentence and fine for IPC penal code section 120 b (criminal conspiracy).*

Packiya Kumar received a two year sentence and fine for IPC penal code section 465 (forgery), a two year sentence and fine for IPC penal code section 468 (forgery, for the purpose of cheating), a two year sentence and fine for IPC penal code section 471 (use of forged material), a three year sentence and fine IPC penal code section 411 (receiving stolen property), a three year sentence and fine for IPC penal code section 414 (concealing or disposing of stolen property), and a seven year sentence and fine for IPC penal code section 120 b (criminal conspiracy).*

Sri Ram AKA Ulagu received a seven year sentence and fine for IPC penal code section 457 (lurking house trespass by night, or house-breaking by night), a three year sentence and fine for IPC penal code section 380 (theft of a building) and a seven year sentence and fine  for IPC penal code section 120 b (criminal conspiracy).*

Parthiban received a seven year sentence and fine for IPC penal code section 457 (lurking house trespass by night, or house-breaking by night), three years for IPC penal code section 380 (theft of a building) and seven years for IPC penal code section 120 b (criminal conspiracy).* 

It should be noted that in the United States, the New York District Attorney's Office in Manhattan filed extradition paperwork for Kapoor in July 2020 after charging him with 86 felony counts for allegedly looting $145 million in antiquities over the last 30 years. 

Last month, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin L. Bragg, Jr. returned 307 antiquities to India, valued at nearly $4 million. Of those, 235 of those were pursuant to his Office’s investigation of Kapoor.  Five of his co-defendants, in the US court case have already been convicted in the United States. 

To get a look at some of the pieces returned to India handled by members of Kapoor's network, please see our earlier blog post on daylight sentences, reconceiving restitutions and the hard work it takes to restitute pieces to their countries of origin.

*NB: Some of these sentences may run concurrently. 

May 25, 2022

Justice Rendered: The final confiscation of properties and business enterprises of Gianfranco Becchina has been confirmed.

DIA Seizing Gianfranco Becchina assets in 2017

Italy's Direzione Investigativa Antimafia, the country's Anti-Mafia Investigation Department has issued a confirmation confiscation decree based upon a request from the Public Prosecutor's Office of Palermo.  As per this decree, this action finalises the 2017 confiscation of a significant portion of movable, real estate and corporate assets "attributable to a well-known international trader of works of art art and artefacts of historical-archaeological value" long suspected to have links with the Sicilian mafia, in and around the port town of Trapani. 

While the DIA's announcement didn't name the, now, 83 year old dealer living in Castelvetrano, the regional newspapers in Sicily, and the national newspaper in Rome, did. 

For decades the Trapani branch of the Cosa Nostra is believed to have accumulated at least some portions of its wealth through the proceeds of illicit archaeological finds.  Some of which, according to Italy's DIA may have been procured through grave robbers working at the isolated Archaeological Park of Selinunte, one of Sicily's great ancient Greek cities, located near Castelvetrano probably in the service of the Cosa Nostra.  This archaeological site covers some 40 hectares and includes Greek temples, ancient town walls, and the ruins of residential and commercial buildings from Italy's past.  Given its remote location, much of the site has not been formally excavated, and it has been prey to opportunistic looters for decades.

To further dismantle the mafia's operational funding in and around Trapani, in November 2017 Italy's Anti-Mafia Investigative Directorate, through the Court of Trapani's penal and preventive measures section, filed an initial seizure order for all movable assets, including real estate and corporate enterprises attributable to Gianfranco Becchina on the basis of an order issued from the District Attorney of Palermo based upon investigations conducted by the DIA, under the coordination of the Palermo Public Prosecutor's Office on the basis that much of Becchina's accumulated wealth was generated through the proceeds of trafficked antiquities. 

Palazzo dei Principi Tagliavia-Aragona-Pignatelli

The preliminary 2017 order included the seizure of Becchina's cement trade business, Atlas Cements Ltd., Olio Verde srl., his signature olive oil production company, Demetra srl., Becchina & company srl.  Real estate holdings confiscated included some 38 buildings as well as Becchina's portions of Palazzo dei Principi Tagliavia-Aragona-Pignatelli, once the noble residence of the family Tagliavia-Aragona-Pignatelli, which is part of the ancient Castello Bellumvider, (an additional part of this palazzo is owned by the city of Castelvetrano and houses the town hall).  Investigators also seized a total of 24 parcels of land belonging to Becchina, and four vehicles.  In total, the value of the seized assets is estimated to be worth more than 10 million euros. 

Giovanni Franco Becchina (b. 1939) was born in Sicily. In the 1970s, he established a business, Palladion Antike Kunst, in Basel, Switzerland, with his wife Ursula.  For almost forty years Becchina headed one of Italy's most notorious “cordata” (a trafficking cell) in a lucrative criminal enterprise that used gangs of tombaroli to loot carefully chosen and insufficiently guarded archaeological sites throughout southern Italy.

It is well-documented that Becchina and other traffickers like him, laundered their looted antiquities through exhibitions at museums and in private collections with manufactured provenance, providing a thin veneer of respectability to material removed from Italy and laundered through the ancient art market. 

In 2001, Becchina was arrested in Italy and charged with receiving stolen goods, illegally exporting goods, and conspiring to traffic goods. In May 2002, the Swiss and Italian authorities raided Palladion Antike Kunst and three of Becchina’s located storage facilities.  A fourth was raided in 2005. 

In 2011, Judge Rosalba Liso dismissed the charges of receiving stolen goods, illegally exporting goods, and conspiring to traffic goods, due to the expiration of the statute of limitations.  However, the Judge in the case confirmed the seizure order for the 5,919 antiquities Becchina had in stock at the time the 2002 and 2005 search warrants were executed.  Material evidence obtained during these seizures confirmed that Becchina bought antiquities directly from tombaroli. Over 90% came from a single source: convicted tombarolo (and later a capo squadra in his own right) Raffaele Monticelli.

January 5, 2021

Israel's Antiquities Authority's Robbery Prevention Unit take three people into custody for questioning on suspicion of dealing in illicit antiquities.

Image Credit - Yoli Schwartz / Israel Antiquities Authority

Three people, believed to be involved in an illegal antiquities trading network, have been taken into custody as the result of an extensive investigation in Israel.  All three individuals are said to be residents of Gush Dan, the densely populated region surrounding the city of Tel-Aviv and have been under surveillance for suspicion of trafficking, illegal possession of antiquities, as well as possible instances of fraud and money laundering.  Amir Ganor, the director of the Antiquities Authority's Robbery Prevention Unit told Israeli newspapers that this is one of the "most significant operations carried out in the country against illegal trade in antiquities" involving some €2.5 million worth of ancient art. 

During the past several months, the fraud unit in the Tel Aviv district has conducted a joint undercover investigation, in cooperation with the Israel Antiquities Authority and the country's Tax Authority.  Yesterday, in the early morning, law enforcement announced that they had conducted search warrants on the apartments of the three unnamed suspects, in warehouses and at a gallery in Tel Aviv.

Law enforcement officers recovered ancient objects and coins most of which dates from the 3rd century BCE through the 11th century CE.  The objects are believed to have been removed from their context during clandestine excavations throughout the Mediterranean basin and North Africa and include Red-figure and Black-figure attic pottery from Ancient Greece and Italy, as well as jugs, vases, coins from the Seleucid Hellenistic period, jewellery, statues, and figurines.  Officers also recovered decorated sarcophagus lids, painted wooden boxes, and objects created with faience from Egypt. 

Despite their stunning recovery, the Israel Antiquities Authority has stated that their investigation is just now getting started.   The country will be reaching out to art and antiquities enforcement counterparts in other countries to discuss the origins and perhaps movements of the objects before their arrival to Israel. 

Two of the suspects have been listed in open source reports as a 70-year-old gallery owner and his 40-year-old son though other article sources indicate that none of the detainees were licensed traders in ancient art though some of the suspects were in contact with licensed dealers.  The third suspect has been described as being a 40-year-old resident of the city of Holon, located 10 km outside the Tel Aviv metropolis.   

All three men were brought in for questioning at the offices of the fraud unit in the Tel Aviv district.  Carrying out illegal excavations at antiquities sites in Israel without a license constitutes a severe violation of the country's patrimony law.  If convicted as such, culprits can be sentenced to up to five years in prison.

Operación Nongreta brings in three gun runners and uncovers one suspect's "museum" of Nazi-themed objects

Image Credit: Guardia Civil

Arrested in a complex multinational police action code-named Operación Nongreta one of three gun runners arrested in Spain at the end of December has been found to have maintained a "museum" of Nazi-themed objects, alongside a substantial arsenal of weapons and ammunition.

Within the framework of the year-long Nongreta operation, involving the Information Office (UCE3) of Spain's Civil Guard, with the support of the Bundeskriminalamt, (the German Federal Criminal Police Office, BKA), the Andalusian Area Information Section, the USECIC and the GEDEX of the Málaga Command, and members of the GAR and the Servicio Cinológico, law enforcement successfully dismantled an arms trafficking group known to be dealing with drug trafficking cells working the Costa del Sol and Campo de Gibraltar regions in the south of Spain.   

The operation, born out of a noticeable uptick in murders carried out during drug-related crimes committed on the Costa del Sol in the final stretch of 2019 using modified assault rifles, resulted in the arrested of three key actors - two German citizens and one British, who have each been charged with participation in an organized crime group, storing and trafficking of arms and ammunition, drug trafficking, and use of forged documents.  The arms traffickers are believed to have been in operation for at least three years, operating a sophisticated scheme which funnelled weaponry obtained from Eastern Europian countries, with access to the old Soviet arsenals, to drug traffickers in need of weaponry active in southern Spain. 

In breaking up the ring, investigators focused their attention on a seventy-year-old German citizen, a former gunsmith living in Coín on the pretext of being a simple foreign retiree. Through exchanges of information with Germany's Bundeskriminalamt, Spanish authorities were informed that the suspect had spent four years in prison for the illegal modification of weapons and also had a current outstanding European Arrest Warrant (EAW), after an arsenal was tied to him in a Hannover case in 2019.  In that case, a family member has already been sentenced to prison for their involvement.

In a subsequent search of this suspect's home in Coín, the Civil Guard, with the assistance of a firearm-sniffing K-9, found a sophisticated hidden workshop, complete with complex machinery, which tapped into the city's electrical grid in order to operate a milling lathe, column drills, a hydraulic press and a blueing oven, the latter used after erasing the serial numbers to restore the barrels of the weapons to almost mint condition.  This would make the weapons almost untraceable, and therefore a perfect weapon of choice in the clandestine arms market.

It was here that the suspect would modify weapons such as the Zastava M70, (Застава М70), a standard-issue domestic folding-stock Kalashnikov variant once used by the Yugoslav People's Army in 1970.  Short and easily concealable under a coat or loose jacket, the weapons are perfect for drug factions engaged in quick hits when fighting over competing turf.  The weapons had been purchased from collectors in Eastern Europe disassembled and were modified in the Spain workshop for resale. The second suspect, also a German citizen, is believed to have been responsible for the storage and concealment of the weapons in a rented warehouse. 

Image Credit: Guardia Civil

The Third Reich memorabilia was identified in a second suspect's home in Alhaurín el Grandes, a town located in the province of Málaga on the north side of the Sierra de Mijas.  There, the police found tables, shelves and display cases jammed with Nazi memorabilia including a portrait bust of Adolf Hitler, SS Uniforms, helmets, stick pins, insignias, medals, flags, and armbands of the National Socialist German Workers' Party, many of which were emblazoned in some way with a swastika or the Nazi eagle.

After a search of the suspect's home, officers moved on to a safe house he rented on the outskirts of the municipality.  It is in that rented warehouse where authorities uncovered an arsenal ready for sale.  There, law enforcement seized 160 firearms made up of 121 short weapons, 22 assault rifles and 8 submachine guns.  Along with the arms, officers recovered 9,967 rounds of ammunition of different calibres, eight silencers, 273 magazines, a grenade, and a kilo and a half of military explosives. 

Spanish newspapers have identified the holder of the Nazi memorabilia and the warehouse as a 54-year-old German named Tilo Kränzler, who publically claimed to be "the grandson of the real driver of the Nazi leader Adolf Hitler" during an interview which can be found on the Radio Platja d'Aro program "Enigma Report." He is also known to have saught connections with a Spanish far-right group.

In addition to his involvement with arms selling, the Kränzler sold olive oil on eBay, and operated a stall which sold military and Nazi paraphernalia as well as T-shirts with the face of the Swedish activist and environmentalist Greta Thunberg with the label “persona Non Greta.” It was this play on words that became the code name for the UCE 3 of the Civil Guard's Operación Nongreta.

The third lead suspect is a British national who also resided in Coín, who acted as the group's intermediary in the sale between the arms dealers, taking a cut of the profits for the arms sold to drug traffickers working the Costa del Sol and Campo de Gibraltar.  Previously arrested for drug trafficking, this UK individual also using fake passports to hide his identity, several of which were recovered by law enforcement during the operation.

At the search of the British suspect's home, the Civil Guard recovered a pistol with its serial number erased and more than 1,200 rounds of ammunition. 

For now, the Court of Instruction of Coín has ordered that the three remain in custody pending trial while the hashish drug traffickers who operate in the Campo de Gibraltar area and to a large part of the mafias that have faced each other for years in Málaga's Costa del Sol will have a bit of difficulty stocking up on their firearms.

Image Credit: Guardia Civil

March 27, 2020

Steve Green to return another 11,500 antiquities to the Iraqi and Egyptian governments, but let's not forget the past.


Journalist Kelly Crow, in a Wall Street Journal exclusive, reports that Hobby Lobby magnate Steve Green has agreed to return an additional 11,500 antiquities to the Iraqi and Egyptian governments.  Consisting mostly of papyrus fragments and ancient clay objects, the collection pieces, originally destined for the philanthropist's museum project, are being relinquished to their source country because they all lack ownership histories.  

No a big surprise there.  It is something academics have been worriedly asking the collector and his museum about for years.

Seemingly apologetic, the billionaire behind the $800 million, eight-story Museum of the Bible, told the Wall Street Journal “One area where I fell short was not appreciating the importance of the provenance of the items I purchased,” adding when he started collecting biblical-era antiquities in 2009 he  “knew little about the world of collecting.”

I'd like to remind ARCA's readership that by the time we published our first article on Green's buying antiquities like hotcakes, in October 2015, the Hobby Lobby craft store giant had already purchased an estimated 40,000 objects for their collection, in just six years.  These included Dead Sea Scroll fragments, biblical papyri, rare biblical texts and manuscripts, cuneiform tablets, Torah scrolls, and rare printed Bibles.  

That's 6,666 objects per year or a whopping 18 objects purchased per day. 

Looking at that from a transactional basis, I would say that Mr. Green's excuse of knowing little about the world of collecting rings a bit hollow.  Green's purchasing power, and avarice, meant his collective team knew a lil more than the average joe when it comes to the world of ancient art dealers and collectors. It is not like they made one or two wrong newbie purchases.  

According to US law enforcement documents, by 2010, just one year after he had started collecting, Green, himself made a trip to the United Arab Emirates to eyeball some 5,548 artefacts reportedly worth millions. This same law enforcement complaint states that the objects “were displayed informally...” “spread on the floor, arranged in layers on a coffee table, and packed loosely in cardboard boxes, in many instances with little or no protective material between them.” 


For a man known to watch his financial line to the level Green does within his craft store empire, for me it is inconceivable to believe that an individual of this billionaire's stature would fork out millions, buying ancient objects without at least a tacit knowledge that he might need to ask questions of the dealers and suppliers he was buying material from. 

For years now I have been saying that if the Greens truly want to make amends, they should fill their future Museum of the Bible with acquisitions collected ethically. In addition they should also make the details of their past purchases open and searchable to external researchers and investigators not just relinquishing batches of suspect objects purchased without sufficient moral and ethical consideration. 

During the first handover of antiquities Green said “We should have exercised more oversight and carefully questioned how the acquisitions were handled.”  Unfortunately it took him another five whole years to muster up the gumption to admit that these additional 11,500 objects were also likely purchased in the same haphazard manner as the ones relinquished earlier.  

I don't know about most folks but if I had the capability of writing million checks dollar checks, and had already once had my feet held to the fire for purchasing antiquities that didn't pass muster, I think that I would likely remember all the other occasions when I wrote eye-popping checks for astronomical sums for equally suspect, not fully-thought out, purchases from individuals who were not completely transparent about where their merchandise was coming from. 

Why it took Green five years to do the right thing on this other set of objects is therefore not to be applauded.  The people in Egypt and Iraq who loot to feed the collecting appetites of Westerners spend years in jail when caught.  But big dollar collectors like Steve Green, who incentivise that very plunder, seem to think that showing remorse in a financial journal or a Hobby Lobby press release should suffice.   

For me it isn't.

Put your collection on line Mr. Green.

Then I will truly believe that you are sincerely sorry for what you have done.  Help researchers, who can connect dodgy dealers put a dent in the illicit supply chain.   Just giving back boxes and boxes of pretty baubles to the countries your dollar has plundered doesn't undo the damage you have done.   

Op/Ed: Lynda Albertson

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