ARCA, being a research-based organisation which specifically examines  crimes that impact art and artefacts, does its best to provide more details to problematic pieces and the problematic dealers that profit from them. Our reporting serves as a means of holding people accountable and reminding individuals of the need to collect responsibly. 

The artefact being returned is not just an Egyptian "head".  It is a decapitated head broken off of an 18th Dynasty Egyptian block statue that was likely intentionally hacked off its body, or deliberately broken at the shoulders for ease of smuggling. Had it been intact, this memorial statue would have shown a man crouched and wrapped in a cloak, inscribed, at the very least with the name of the owner, incised on the body, the base, or the back pillar if one existed. 

Our original reporting touched on what we were able to ascertain about this disembodied head of a squatting man. We knew he was documented on social media sites and came up for sale through a Swiss-based art dealer during the short-lived European Fine Art Fair in 2020 and again with this same dealer when the fair reopened post-Covid in 2022.  Having been the subject of a joint-European policing initiative we know that authorities were convinced he was illegally exported from Egypt in contravention of the country's cultural property laws, then transited through intermediaries in Thailand before being first put up for sale in Barcelona, where it was sold by controversial gallery owner, Jaume Bagot Peix, of J. Bagot Arqueología.

As early as 2015 Bagot's problematic purchasing had placed him on the radar of Policía Judicial y de la UCIE de la Comisaría General de Información.  In 2018, he and Oriol Carreras Palomar were formally charged for their alleged participation in a crime of financing terrorism, belonging to a criminal organisation, concealment of contraband, and use of forgery for their roles in facilitating the sale of illicit antiquities involving pieces trafficked from a second war torn country, Libya.  

Bagot also was charged, and subsequently convicted in Italy, related to a stolen Roman statue and has been linked to a stolen Egyptian ushabti from Sudan, which was again circulated on the art market with falsified provenance documentation. That artefact was sold to the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden in the Netherlands.  

But despite being suspected of trafficking material from at least three war-torn countries, and having one conviction in mainland Europe while other cases in other jurisdictions pile up, Bagot continues to receive favourable coverage in the press and has been described as operating "one of the most renowned ancient art galleries in Spain."  He also continues to be granted booths and promotion by Spain's Feriarte, an important annual art fair held at IFEMA Madrid, most recently from 18 to 26 October 2025, as well as at ANTIK Almoneda, another Madrid art sales event held from 22 to 30 March 2025.