«Con il traffico di opere d'arte ci manteniamo la famiglia.»

"With the trafficking of works of art we support our family."  So read a purported intercepted pizzini, stated to have been written by Cosa Nostra boss Matteo Messina Denaro to one of his men.

Pizzini, literally little messages, are generally codified messages which represent the orders, thoughts and concerns of the mafia's men in power. Provenzano for instance, was known to write his on a small typewriter, folding and taping them into tiny squares, so that he could communicate his orders among the uomini d'onore through these tiny secret messages while on the run as a mafia fugitive.

When captured and deciphered by law enforcement, pizzini like these can serve as evidence, paper accomplices, which like informants, give concretised clues on mafia operations and in some cases, outlining specific orders given in the commission of crimes by clan bosses. 

News of this leaked message was first published in a 2021, in a Huffington post article by Vincenzo Musacchio, a Jurist and Professor of Criminal Law.  It is now making the airwaves again, following Messina Denaro's arrest.

But even if this pizzini turns out to be real evidence, proven to have been written by Messina Denaro, it merely confirms what we already know.  

The trafficking of art as a form of "currency" has already been concretised through other well known organised crime cases in Italy.  One of the more dramatic examples, a few years back, is that of Camorra clan boss, Raffaele Imperiale, who held on to two Van Gogh paintings, first stolen in Amsterdam and later recovered at a property connected to him in the Bay of Naples.

While both were potent actors in Italy's organised crime syndicates, Imperiale and Messina Denaro are not the only mobsters who have used art for illegal means. The art market is a global one, allowing for easy movement of assets across borders. 

Art and antiquities are attractive financial instrument, especially for the underworld, as it can be used by criminals as a means of concealing the proceeds derived from illicit activities.  This can also include purchasing legitimate works of art with dirty money, selling it at a later date for a profit and thereby "washing" the money so that it appears that the funds come from a legitimate, and now more traceable, source. 

Criminals may also use art and antiquities as a means of transferring large sums of money across international borders, as art is not subject to the same regulations and scrutiny as financial banking transactions. 

Art and antiquities can also been used as collateral for underworld loans, or when the location of stolen material is disclosed during plea deals, may sadly serve as a bargaining chip used by charged offenders as a means of negotiating lower prison sentences, as we have just seen in Germany this week.

What comes out publicly in the Messina Denero investigation, related to art and antiquities crime, which might back up this slip of paper should be interesting. 

For now, we will have to settle with seeing the back side of the Sicilian crime boss' wardrobe, in one of his hideouts.  A space where Messina Denero could access - via a sliding wooden wall - an armoured room, complete with boxes of jewels, precious stones, and it seems, paintings...but also empty boxes. 

This month, has proved an interesting month in the ongoing trial of six burglars, believed to be responsible for the theft of 18th-century jewels stolen from the Green Vault (Grünes Gewölbe in German) museum within the Dresden Castle in Saxony.  This week, four out of six members of the large Remmo family, brothers Wissam and Mohamed, and cousins Rabieh and Bashir Remmo entered formal confessions before the district court in Dresden, in hopes of receiving lighter sentences for their cooperation. 

Family members Abdul Majed and Ahmed Remmo have seemingly been exonerated by the confessions of the others. 

Family members who have confessed to active roles in the museum burglary, stated that they orchestrated the theft after Mohamed Remmo, twin brother to Abdul Majed Remmo, received a photo from an unnamed person who had visited the museum during a school outing. That photo was apparently of the Dresden Green Diamond. 

Set in a hat clasp, this dramatic 41-carat, 8.2 gram natural green diamond, from the mines of India, is the largest green diamond in the world.  Too well guarded, the team of would-be burglars turned their sights to other jewels which they believed would be easier to access.

Abdul Majed Remmo's role, had been stated as having been to gather supplies used for the theft, though his family members on trial downplayed his role, saying he performed inadequately, purchased inferior tools, and wasn't present on the day of the heist. 

After scouting the building in a lead up to the November 25th 2019 theft, Rabieh Remmo, caught on CCTV footage with a flashlight, entering the closed museum shortly before 5 a.m.  He admitted that he is the thief depicted in video footage and to smashing the display case, struck an estimated 56 times in less than 30 seconds.  Rabieh also admitted to filling a sack with €113.8m. worth of pieces from the Green Room's historic jewellery collection.

Pieces stolen during the theft include:

• a Hutkrempe der Diamantrosengarnitur by Christian August and August Goffhelf Globig, Dresden, 1782-1789;
• a Shoulder loop (epaulette) (diamond rose set) (part available) by 
• Christian August Globig and August Gotthelf Globig. Dresden 1782-1789;
• Christian August and August Gotthelf Globig's Sword (diamond rose), 1782-1789, inv. no. VIII 16 with a diamond-studded hilt containing nine large and 770 smaller diamonds as well as its scabbard;
• the Jewel of the Polish Order of the White Eagle (diamond rose set) by Christian August and August Gotthelf Globig, Dresden, 1782-89
• Breast Star of the Polish Order of the White Eagle (set of brilliants) Jean-Jacques Pallard. Geneva/Vienna between 1746 and 1749;
• Queen Amalie Auguste's Great Pectoral Bow by Christian August Globig, Dresden 1782, 51 large and 611 small diamonds, silver;
• Necklace of 177 Saxon River Pearls, obtained from Vogtland waters before 1734, lined up in 1805;
• 10 Rock Buttons from the Diamond Rose Set (each preserved)
• Jean Jacques Pallard, Geneva 1753, inv. no. VIII 9/1-10;
• Two arched shoe buckles from the Diamond Rose Set, workshop of Christian August Globig, Dresden 1782-1789, inv. no. VIII 12/ a,b;
• Large Diamond Rose (Diamond Rose Set)inventory no. VIII 15;
• Piece of jewelery in the form of palmettes (set of diamonds)
• Jean Jacques Pallard, Vienna, 1746-1746;
• Epaulette with the so-called "Saxon White" from the diamond set
• Franz Diespach; Christian August or August Gotthelf Globig; Jean-Jacques or André Jacques Pallard; 1782-1789;
• Hat decoration, so-called heron tail from the diamond set
• August Gotthelf Globig, Dresden between 1782 and 1807, inv. no. VIII 26; 
• Part of a muff hook, workshop of Jean Jacques Pallard, Geneva/Vienna 1746 and 1749, inv. no. VIII 34;
• Queen Amalie Auguste's diamond necklace (preserved in parts), 
• Ignaz Konrad Plödterl, Dresden 1824, inv. no. VIII 38;
• Aigrette for the hair in the shape of a sun by August Gotthelf Globig, Dresden, 1782-1807;
• Aigrette for the hair in the shape of a crescent moon (The diamond jewelry and the pearls of the queens)
• August Goffhelf Globig, Dresden, 1782-1807;

Wissam and Mohamed Remmo informed the court, through their lawyers, that they too were immediately involved in the heist. Wassim copped to having cut the bars on a window in the vault prior to the burglary and also to standing guard outside of the museum to receive the stolen items and tools used in the break-in.  Mohamed Remmo admitted, through his lawyer, to being outside the museum on the morning of the theft and to to receive the stolen items.

In a later than the others admission, Bashir Remmo, through his lawyers, told the court on Friday, that he had not been initially involved in the preparations for the burglary, but admitted to standing guard on the morning of the theft and to receiving the stolen items.

The thieves involved then made their getaway in an Audi A6 which they set fire to some four kilometers away from the palace in an underground car park, in Dresden-Pieschen, hoping by doing so, to any destroy evidence they may have theft behind.  They then proceeded back to Berlin in a Mercedes disguised as a taxi.

In an early Christmas present to Dresden, German authorities have been able to retrieve 31 of the jewellery pieces stolen in the 2019 robbery between December 16th and 17th.  Several of the most valuable pieces are still unaccounted for. 

Conservators testified during the trial that several of the recovered diamond-encrusted jewellery pieces had been broken and all bear traces of a whitish substance. This could be discharge residue from the fire extinguisher that the burglar discharged in an attempt to destroy traces of the team's DNA.  Some of the recovered diamonds also appear to have been damaged and it is believed that they were submerged in water for an extended period of time.

All of these confessions were spurred by efforts to lower time in prison, where the maximum period of incarceration could be up to 15 years for the museum theft and the accompanying charge of aggravated arson in the underground car park. 

The thief that burgled Greece’s National Gallery-Alexandros Soutsos Museum in Athens eleven years ago has been sentenced.  

Citing that the Court recognised the thief's good behaviour after his arrest for the heist, the Single-Member Court of Criminal Appeals of Athens handed down a six-year suspended probationary sentence with limited electronic monitoring, which will allow Giorgos Sarmantzopoulos, a circulating distance of three kilometres from his residence so that he can hold down a job and care of his elderly and sick parents. Previously, during the trial phase, he had been on complete house arrest.

On 9 January 2012, George S set off the security alarm at the Greek museum by opening a door 6 or 7 times, until the guard believed that the alarm system was malfunctioning and disabled the system. Then, at 4:30 a.m., he entered the museum through an separate unlocked balcony door and swiftly stripped four artworks from their frames, knocking others off the wall in doing so. 

Originally he selected: 

Head of a Woman, 1934 by Pablo Picasso

Stammer Windmill with Summer House, 1905 by Piet Mondrian 

Landscape with a Farm by Piet Mondrian 

St Diego de Alcala in Ecstasy with the Holy Trinity and the Symbols of Passion by Guglielmo Caccia, who was known as il Moncalvo.

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.

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

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. 

"Ali Aboutaam knew or must have assumed that they had been wrongfully acquired". 

Provenance:

Elias Bustros, Beruit 1950’s-1983;

By descent, 1983-1986?;

(Gawain McKinley, England, on behalf of Selim Dere and Sleiman Aboutaam, 1986)

"Ali Aboutaam, in his capacity as administrator of Phoenix Ancient Art SA, has asked art experts, or has asked employees of Phoenix Ancient Art SA to obtain from art experts: produce and/or sign false invoices; and/or produce or cause others to produce documents indicating source that are contrary to reality, sometimes contained directly in invoices; and/or provide untrue source indications for use by others."

"a pedigree aimed at dispelling suspicion of illicit provenance and/or to facilitate their customs transfer with a view to their sale on the art market through Phoenix Ancient Art SA, Tanis Antiquities LTB and Inanna Art Services SA, i.e. companies of which Ali Aboutaam has Control."

This is a timeline of the two Washe investigations.

"We are selling 2 Andy Warhol paintings from our private collection. We are parting with these pieces only because we need the money for renovations to our house. Our loss is your gain. Pieces bought from a former Martin Lawrence art dealer in California. We over paid terribly in 2007 for the art. Price paid $240,000. We have enclosed the Christie's estimates as of 2011 for the art as well.  Auction range $120,000 to $180,000. We are trying to sell on Ebay because it is much cheaper and because Christie's won't be able to auction our pieces till May 2017. The pieces are numbered and registered with the Warhol Foundation. Pieces are from 1979. Size 14 inches by 11 inches. Synthetic Polymer Paint and Silkscreen ink on canvas. Warhol Foundation # PA65.049 & PA65.032."

"Hello [redacted], Thank you for calling my wife. She said you were very kind and respectful, which is how I remembered you from our first interaction. I was going to call on Tuesday (election day) to ask about the 'shadows', but because of the time difference I was unable. I was in meetings and buildings all that day which did not allow me to have my phone. Once I saw your messages, things had already escalated to an uncomfortable level. Mr.  [redacted] is our family lawyer. He was trying to resolve the matter without unnecessary litigation. He was not going to represent me formally in any civil or criminal proceedings, but was hoping to satisfy you as a client. On Friday he did offer a full refund to your lawyer, but from your Saturday email it seemed it was too late to resolve this matter without a drawn-out court case. The information you explained to my wife is very troubling. If the photos I sent you are clearly different then the ‘Shadows' you have now, then that is a serious problem. However, regardless of the problems with the 'shadows', you have a right to a full refund according to our written agreement in section 9.3. I have no reason to believe that you would mis-represent any information. When I spoke to you last I had the impression that you were a fair and honest businessman. My wife has the same impression since your conversation yesterday. I was just surprised with how quickly things escalated. I am traveling this week, but I would like to return your $80,000 ASAP. Please send me your Bank of America information and I will send you the money. Once you receive your money please send me the 'shadows'. I need to investigate what happened on my side of this transaction. Once I have the ‘shadows' and can confirm your information, I will also refund the cost of sending [redacted] to Boston. I don't want you to suffer financially from this transaction. Especially, if the fault is on my side. Thank you again for reaching out to my wife. I will be in touch directly with you later this week. Best Brian".

one count of wire fraud, 

one count of interstate transportation for a scheme to defraud, 

one count of possession of converted goods and an unlawful monetary transaction.