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Showing posts with label Interpol. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Interpol. Show all posts

May 12, 2012

Courthouse News Service: "Stolen Pissarro Turns Up with Walrus Tusks, Polar Bear Belts"

On May 3, Purna Nemani reported for the Courthouse News Service that stolen paintings had been found by an undercover wildlife agent in Anchorage, Alaska.

Five stolen works of art found include a chalk study, three watercolors,and an oil painting: "Study of Alexa Wilding," by Dante Gabriel Rossetti; "Milton" by Lucien Pissaro; "Nests at Kilmurry" by Mildred Anne Butler; "Castle and Figures in a Farmland" by William Payne; and "Landscape and Cattle on the Thames" by Henry Garland.  Nemani wrote:
All were originals and/or signed; most were produced in the 19th century and had been auctioned to private sellers at Christies and houses at museums in America and London, accordign to the police report (Bloomfield Police Report) and the federal complaints.  Three of the five works had been reported stolen by a private owner, Nicolette Wernick, and were valued at $68,000, according to the police report and complaint.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife discovered the stolen art in September 2010 in a suspect's home.  According to the forfeiture complaint:
He told the agent how the paintings were stolen by his half-brother, later identified as Mario Murphy, and some other 'cousins,' from the Wernick Collection approximately five years before.
The suspect apparently wanted the undercover agent for the Fish and Wildlife Service to find a buyer for the stolen artwork in exchange for a finder's fee.

Interpol did not list the Lucien Pissarro painting in its Stolen Art Database; the only painting by the artist identified on the list is "Fog over Herblay" stolen from France in 1999.

Nemani reports that 'three of the five paintings were confirmed as stolen through the "Art Loss Register" and are currently in custody of the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

May 10, 2012

More confirmation of old news? Pietro Grasso, head of the anti-Mafia crime unit, confirms in May that Caravaggio's Nativity of Palermo eaten by pigs

Caravaggio's Nativity from Palermo
In 2009, Judith Harris wrote for the ARCA blog a post titled "Breaking News on the Stolen Caravaggio Nativity" that a member of the mafia told law officials that the painting was likely destroyed in the 1980s.  But just last week, Journalist Noel Grima for The Malta Independent online reported May 6th that Pietro Grasso, the head of the anti-Mafia crime unit, confirmed again that legal authorities believe that the Caravaggio of Palermo has been eaten by pigs.

Possibly no one wants to believe that the painting has been so carelessly destroyed; the FBI and Interpol still list the painting as stolen and missing.

Grima repeats a formerly published article in eosarte.eu "Arezzo, il Procuratore antimafia Pietro Grasso: il Caravaggio di Palermo mangiato dai porci" dated April 22 reports that Grasso confirmed during a press conference earlier rumors that the Nativity paintings with Saints Lorenzo and Francis of Assisi has likely been tossed around by criminals and ended up in a pig sty and eaten by rats and pigs over the years.
"Ci verrobbe tempo perché è una lunga storia ... ma riteniamo che il quadro sia finito nelle mani di ignoranti che l'hanno hascosto in una porcilaia, dove magari porci poi se lo sono mangiato."
Grima translates:
The anti-Mafia's head's reply was a chilling one: "We need more time because the situation is rather complicated, but we believe the painting ended up in the hands of ignorant people who hit it in a pigsty where the pigs ate it."
The Malta connected dates back to the 17th century when the artist was imprisoned there.  Caravaggio himself lead a tumultuous lifestyle documented in Italian police records.

Grima claims that a painting similar to The "Nativity" by Caravaggio would be worth $200 million while the FBI website estimates the value at $20 million.

In October 1969, two thieves entered the Oratory of San Lorenzo in Palmero, Italy, according to the FBI, and removed Caravaggio's Nativity with San Lorenzo and San Francesco from its frame.

Interpol still reports the painting as missing on its stolen art database and places the date of the theft as October 18, 1969.  Interpol lists nine other works by Caravaggio (or from the school of or in the manner of) as stolen: Portrait of an Old Woman, Montepulciano, Italy, December 22, 1970; Doubting Tomas from Frascati, Italy, March 15, 1974; Beggars and Invalids (copper painting) from San Sebastian, Spain, April 1978; Man with a Pendant Earring, The Draughts Players, and Venice Feeding the Cupids, from La Storta, Italy, December 1, 1979; Saint Gerolamo, from Dozza, Italy, June 4, 1985; Two Men Playing Dice, from Lessona, Italy, July 27, 1986; and Los Jugadores from Santa Fe de Bogata, Colombia, October 24, 1999.

April 27, 2012

Interpol's Stolen Art Database Reports Eight Cézanne Paintings Missing

by Catherine Sezgin, ARCA Blog

Interpol is the international police organization established in 1923.  In 2009, its database for Stolen Art was made available to the public.  It takes about one to two weeks to obtain permission and a password to access the lists of recovered and stolen art objects.

Earlier this month, police in Serbia recovered a painting by Paul Cézanne that had been stolen from an Impressionist museum in Zurich in 2008.  Interpol lists eight stolen artworks created by Cézanne.


Auvers sur Oise
Period: 1889-18892
Measurements: 46 cm x 55 cm
Stolen from Oxford, United Kingdom, on January 1, 2000.


La Montagne Sante Victoire
Period: Circa 1865
Measurements; 33 cm x 49 cm.
Stolen from Le Pecq, France, on March 27, 2008.



Peches sur un plat
Period: 1872-1877
Measurements: 23 cm x 30.50 cm
Stolen from Argentina, Buenos Aires, on December 26, 1980.

Still Life
Measurements: 49 cm x 64.20 cm
Stolen from Oberageri, Switzerland, on April 25, 1996.



Paysage au Lac
Period: 1896








Sentier parmi les roches
Period: between 1899 and 1902






Vue dans un jardin (watercolour)
Stolen from France on December 8, 2003.








Human Face

Stolen from France on December 8, 2003.  This watercolour is painted on the reverse side of another painting, Vue dans un jardin.

March 14, 2012

Joshua Knelman Launching "Hot Art" at The Flag Art Foundation in New York on March 22

by Catherine Schofield Sezgin, ARCA Blog Editor

"Interpol and UNESCO listed art theft as the fourth-largest black market in the world (after drugs, money-laundering, and weapons).  But what did that mean? ... one point was clear: don't look at the Hollywood versions of art theft -- the Myth.  This is a bigger game, with more players, and the legitimate business of art is directly implicated.  A lot of the crimes are hidden in the open.  Stealing art is just the beginning.  Then the art is laundered up into the legitimate market, into private collections, into the world's most renowned museums." -- excerpt from Joshua Knelman's Hot Art

Toronto journalist Joshua Knelman, author of Hot Art: Chasing Thieves and Detective Through the Secret World of Stolen Art (Tin House Books, 2012), will launch the American Trade Paper version of his  book from 6 to 8 p.m. on March 22 at The Flag Art Foundation in New York.

Knelman’s four year investigation of stolen art began with a local story about a burglary at a gallery in Toronto and ended with an international perspective. His nonfiction book begins in Hollywood in 2008 with the Art Theft Detail of the Los Angeles Police Department in a ride along with Detectives Don Hrycyk and Stephanie Lazarus who are investigating the robbery of an antiques store on La Cienega Boulevard.  Knelman immediately contrasts the meticulous and steady work of the police (he describes Hrycyk working art theft cases "with the patience of a scientist") with the images of glamorous heist movies such as The Thomas Crown Affair (1999).

In the first two chapters ("Hollywood" and "Law and Disorder") he links organized crime with art theft: the Los Angeles District Attorney's office had identified an Armenian gang for the antique-store job on La Cienega. In the second chapter, Knelman describes his coverage for The Walrus, a Canadian magazine, on a burglary at a small art gallery in 2003 and how the thief threatened him, tried to hand over stolen property to him, and then tries to educate him "about how art theft worked as an industry" as a way of distracting Knelman for the thief's own crimes:
He discussed how poor the security systems were at most of the major cultural institutions and of course at mid-sized and smaller galleries.  That made his job easier.  So there was that angle -- art galleries and museums weren't adequately protecting themselves against pros like him. 
Then he veered in another direction. 
"Okay, this is how it works," he said.  "It's like a big shell game.  All the antique and art dealers, they just pass it around from one to another."  He moved his fingers around the table in circles and then looked up.  "Do you understand?" He looked very intense, as if he had just handed me a top-secret piece of information, but I had no idea what he meant.  What did art dealers have to do with stealing art?  But our meeting was over.
Knelman published an article in The Walrus in 2005, "Artful Crimes", about international art theft.

In his book, Hot Art, Knelman meets cultural property attorney Bonnie Czegledi (author of Crimes Against Art: International Art and Cultural Heritage Law (Carswell, 2010) who introduces him to the roles of Interpol; the International Council of Museums; the International Foundation for Art Research (IFAR) and the Art Loss Register.  Knelman traveled with Czegledi to an International Council of Museums conference in Cairo, at his own expense, getting shaken down by a conference organizer for additional hotel fees above and beyond what he had agreed to pay the hotel manager.  Knelman meets Canadian police officer Alain Lacoursière and speaker Rick St. Hilaire, then a county prosecutor in New Hampshire who lectured on the impact of art theft in the United States and "knew a lot about the impact of art theft on Egypt." He visits the Egyptian Museum in Cairo with St. Hilaire and provides a great history of the collection and Napoleon's visit in the 19th century.

Knelman provides a personal account, both thrilling and dangerous, and admirable.  The book contains primary information for research into the black market of art, including a few chapters with an art thief, Paul Hendry, in England.

The book also provides a detailed profile of Don Hrycyk at the LAPD and the history of the Art Theft Detail, beginning with the work of Detective Bill Martin and includes information about Hryck's investigation of a residential art robbery in Encino in 2008; other cases ("his work was the most detailed example I found of a North American city interacting with the global black market"); a tour of the evidence warehouse which included fake art that had been the subject of a string operation into a Dr. Vilas Likhite; and an anecdote of an attempted theft at an unnamed major museum under renovation in Los Angeles.  In 2008, Knelman also interviewed artist June Wayne, founder of Tamarind Lithography Workshop (now the Tamarind Institute), who had a tapestry stolen in 1975; Leslie Sacks, owner of Leslie Sacks Fine Art in Brentwood, who discusses security measures and two burglaries; and Bob Combs, director of security at The Getty Center.

Both Hrycyk and Czegledi reference art historian Laurie Adams' book, Art Cop, about New York Police Detective Robert Volpe, the first detective in North America to investigate art theft full-time (1971 to 1983) after his role as a undercover narcotics cop in the late 1960s in a famous case memorialized in the film The French Connection about a ring of heroin dealers importing the drug from France.

Knelman also interviewed Giles Waterfield, director of the Dulwich Picture Gallery in London when a Rembrandt was stolen in 1981; Richard Ellis, founder of Scotland Yard's Art and Antiques Squad; and Robert K. Wittman, the first FBI agent to investigate art theft full-time, when Wittman was six months away from retirement; and Bonnie Magness-Gardiner from the Art Crime Team at the Federal Bureau of Investigation; and Alain Lacoursière, Montreal police officer investigating art crimes in Quebec, including the unsolved 1972 robbery of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.

The book features the anonymous blogger Art Hostage (Paul Hendry) that turns out to be Knelman's source on art theft; Jonathan Sazonoff and his website The World's Most Wanted Art; and Ton Cremers and The Museum Security Network (MSN).

Joshua Knelman will also be speaking at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, March 20, at Book Soup in Los Angeles.

March 23, 2011

Wednesday, March 23, 2011 - ,,, No comments

UNESCO 1970 Convention Today: Last week's conference

Dr. Jorge Sánchez-Cordero speaking at the public debate.
by Catherine Schofield, Editor

Home from Paris, I will continue coverage of the UNESCO meeting on the commemoration of the 40th anniversary of the 1970 Convention, the still to be ratified by one-third of the signatories of an international effort to stop the illicit trafficking of cultural property, as does the looting of archaeological sites all over the world.

The 1970 Convention, formerly known as the Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property 1970, can be read here on UNESCO's website.

On March 15, in one of the auditoriums at the UNESCO building in the 7th arrondissement of Paris just a few minutes walk from Napoleon's Tomb, the meeting, "The 1970 Convention: Past and Future", began with a public debate moderated by journalist Louis Laforge. The speakers included Irina Bokova, Director-General, UNESCO; Bernd Rossbach, Director, Specialized Crimes and Analysis, INTERPOL; Dr. Jorge A. Sánchez Cordero, Director of the Mexican Center of Uniform Law; Stéphane Martin, President, Musée du Quai Branly; and Jane Levine, Worldwide Compliance Director and Senior Vice President, Sotheby's Auction House.

One of the scheduled speakers, Dr. Zahi Hawass, Egyptian's brief former Minister of Culture, was 'unable to leave Cairo' to attend the meeting. Instead, he sent a message that said he supported the fight against the illicit theft of cultural property and asked that people help Egypt find the items recently stolen from the Cairo museum.

"The art market is sometimes painted as the enemy," Jane Levine, a former American prosecutor said, after UNESCO's introductor remarks. Her job at Sotheby's, she said, is to train staff on how to ask questions about the provenance of objects. She works with a full-time department of lawyers and admits that her appointment is a change in the market's "new attitude" of focusing on the due diligence aspect of archaeological objects.

Mr. Rossbach told the audience that INTERPOL is a "crucial partner with UNESCO" in fighting the illicit trafficking in art and cultural objects. INTERPOL seeks the cooperation of specialized organizations like UNESCO and stressed the importance of training. INTERPOL released a summary of his statements on the group's website here.

Mr. Sanchez-Cordero said in Spanish, according to UNESCO's English translator, that the 1970 Convention 'has to play a prominent role in the new cultural order'. He said that the convention 'only protects objects placed on an inventory list, a problem in implementing the 'effectiveness' of tackling this problem and one that 'runs counter to archaeological sites and is a problem for countries of origin.' Another shortfall, he said, was that it was just not enough to adopt the international convention. "We shouldn't stop at that but follow-up and give countries of origin (of cultural objects) a system to follow up the convention and to take remedial action.'

Mr. Martin said in French, and I also paraphrase him through UNESCO's English translator, that French museums will not complete collections with objects that unlawfully entered the market. 'Most objects in museums haven't been created to be in a museum,' he said, 'so the wish to place them there doesn't fit in with all cultures, such as placing a religious object outside of a church. What is La Jaconde? Is it an Italian object because Leonardo da Vinci painted it? Or French because François I purchased it? Or is it Japanese because it's viewed by the Japanese?' It's a fascinating and complex issue. Everyone rejects a nationalistic view of the world. It's a cultural issue for everyone and counter to trade.'

UNESCO's Director-General, Madame Irina Bokova, said that she wanted to "ring the bell of the alarm" and find out how to "strengthen and implement" the 1970 Convention, mentioning that there was a "new conscience" in the past 40 years that supports cultural exchange, diversity, knowledge and art, but is against the "pillaging" of archaeological sites, the trafficking of illicit cultural objects which is "robbing" people of their identity, rights, and destroying archaeological sites and excavations. She commended the countries of Belgium, The Netherlands, and Switzerland who recently signed the convention. "Without international cooperation, it would be difficult to curb this trade."

Mr. Laforge asked INTERPOL's Rossbach if there are any major routes for illegal trafficking of cultural objects. "There is always a reaction and an action," Rossback said. "We cannot be fixed on one route. We are working with partners to identify those gaps."

Interpol has opened a new office in Singapore, Laforge asked as translated from French to English, is this indicative of a new market? "Yes," Rossbach answered. "Singapore is a sign."

According to UNESCO:
"The illicit trafficking of antiquities is estimated to be superior to US $6 billion per year, according to research conducted by the United Kingdom's House of Commons on July 2002.  Ten years later, the UN report on transnational crimes calculated that the world traffic in cocaine reached US $72 billion; arms, $52b; heroine, $33b; counterfeiting, $9.8B; and cybercrime, $1,253B.  Together with the trafficking in drugs and arms, the black market of antiquities and culture constitutes one of the most persistent illegal trades in the world."
We'll continue coverage of this UNESCO 1970 Convention meeting tomorrow.

January 26, 2011

Glasgow Police Recover A Corot and Two Other Paintings Stolen from Glasgow Museums but not Reported to Interpol's Stolen Art Database



by Catherine Schofield Sezgin

The Herald in Scotland reported today that police have recovered a painting by French artist Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot and two other works (a landscape by the Scottish Post-Impressionist painter Samuel Peploe and another work by the Italian Renaissance painter Federico Barocci) that were "linked" to thefts of art from museums in Scotland in the 1990s.

A curator recognized Wooded Landscape with Figures by Corot in an auction catalogue last November, The Herald reported in "Exclusive: Police recover stolen art".

This Corot painting was not listed on Interpol's Stolen Art Database as one of the 16 Corot paintings reported stolen between 1972 and 2008 from Canada, Italy, France, the Czech Republic, Germany, and Slovenia. The retrieved Corot landscape was once part of the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum which features French Impressionists and 17th-century Dutch and Flemish Paintings. The Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum in Glasgow was closed for renovation from 2003 to 2006.

The article speculates that a member of the Glasgow City Council may have been involved in selling art from the Glasgow Museums due to the poor inventory controls. The investigation continues.

In addition to theft, Corot's art is one of the "most faked," according to Freemanart Consultancy which advertises itself as an expert in the fine art of authentication. Corot himself signed many faked and copied works by either his pupils or those of his artistic friends who needed money, according to Freemanart Consultancy.

Photos: Young Girl Leaning on Left Elbow (top) and Girl Musing by a Fountain (bottom), as titled in Interpol's Stolen Art Database, were two paintings by Corot taken from the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts in 1972 and remain missing.

October 24, 2010

Sunday, October 24, 2010 - , 1 comment

Courbet Painting Stolen from Swansea Still Missing After 53 years


By Catherine Schofield Sezgin

October 24th is the 53rd anniversary of the theft of a Courbet seascape stolen from an art gallery in Swansea, Wales. Coast Scene with Cliffs and Breaking Waves was on loan to the Glynn Vivian Art Gallery’s for a traveling exhibition when it disappeared on a Friday morning while the gallery was open.

INTERPOL, the international police organization, reports the painting as the earliest of the stolen Courbet paintings in its database of stolen works of art that has been publishing such information since 1947. INTERPOL has allowed online access to this database to “reduce illicit trade” since August 2009.

The 19th century painting is described as a “dark picture, depicting a leaden cloudy sky and dark green sea.” The 24 by 18 inch (60 by 45 centimeter) oil painting, which at the time was estimated to be valued at 3,000 to 5,000 pounds, was one of 33 paintings included in the exhibition French Painting from Romanticism to Realism: Gustave Courbet, Honoré Daumier, Eugene Delacroix, Jean-François Millet and Carle Venet. The theft occurred one week before the exhibit was scheduled to close.

The painting’s absence was noted during a routine inspection when the empty frame was found. Police investigators speculated that the work could have been smuggled out in a satchel between 10 and noon on that Friday morning when a staff member left the room. The police dusted the abandoned frame for fingerprints although they had originally hoped that the theft had been a prank and that the painting would be returned over the weekend.

The painting had been on loan to the art gallery for two months. The owner of the painting, David C. T. Thomas, a London-Welshman, told a reporter in 1957 that he had purchased the work in 1955 from a London dealer, and that the painting had been the most valuable of his small collection. The painting was in the collection of “A. Paroissen” until it was sold at Christie’s London in July, 1894, the Evening Post reported, and the painting is signed “G. Courbet.”

Gustave Courbet, the son of a prosperous vintner and landowner, pursued painting outside of academic training. Courbet spent six weeks in Etretat in the late summer of 1869, during which he earned commissions from either his dealers, or his clients, who were “hoping to obtain the work of a famous place by a famous artist.” He painted 14 canvases showing Etretat’s cliffs and several dozen views of the sea. The Musée d’Orsay in Paris has two seascapes painted in 1970, “La falaise d’Etretat après l’orage” (“Cliff at Etretat after a Storm”) and “La Vague” (“The Wave”).

The stolen painting is not easily traced in the publications about Courbet’s works. Patricia Pate Havlice’s World Painting Index, published in 1977, does not list the titles of either “Coast Scene with Cliffs and Breaking Waves” (all the titles are in English) or “Leaden Sky Over a Raging Sea.” Robert Fernier’s “Vie et l’oeuvre de Gustave Courbet: catalogue raisonné”, published by the Wildenstein Foundation in 1978, also published more than 20 years after the theft, does not include an image that would match the painting stolen from the Welsh gallery that was sold in London in the 1950s. If it is difficult to trace the provenance of the painting, how difficult would it be to identify the painting today?

The thief did not have to be an art dealer or historian to know that the painting was valuable. The curator of the Glynn Vivian Art Gallery had written in an article in the local newspaper, the Evening Post, “It would not be an exaggeration to say that never have so many masterpieces been brought together within its walls before.” The missing painting was described as “one of the greatest examples of landscape painting,” according to the Evening Post. Why did the thief steal only the Courbet and not the other famous works of art? Did (s)he have a special attachment to that particular painting, or was it easier to steal than the others?

The newspapers reported on the theft with headlines, such as “Masterpiece is Stolen in Swansea” (Evening Post, October 25, 1957); “Did a Fanatic Steal the Painting? Difficult to sell work by well-known artist” (Evening Post, October 26); “Art gallery masterpiece stolen” (Evening Post, October 26); and “Search goes on for picture thief” (Evening Post, October 28). An image of the painting was also published in the Evening Post on October 30 under the title “Leaden Sky over a Raging Sea.”

INTERPOL’s stolen art works database features two other missing seascapes: “La Mer” stolen from Rochefort, Switzerland in August 1992, and “Coastal Landscape in North of France” (painted in 1866) stolen from Kilchberg, Switzerland in January 2008. Eight other Courbet paintings have been reported stolen to Interpol: a self-portrait in 1971 from Italy; the head of a youth from France in 1981; a "Standing Man" from Switzerland in 1984; a "Shot Deer" from Slovenia in 2010; and four landscapes (Canada in 1972; France in 1997; Paraguay in 2002; and Switzerland in 2008).

The Courbet landscape stolen from the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts in 1972 had been publicized as a valuable painting in the newspapers before the nighttime robbery of the museum when three men entered an unsecured skylight and stole more than 18 paintings – including works by Daumier, Delacroix, and Millet.

The website Art Theft Central (Courbet Painting Recovered, December 3, 2009) cited a report from the Associated Press that the French police had found a Courbet painting stolen in 2004, “The Wave”, at the house of an employee from the Paris auction house, Hôtel Drouot. At the time, “The Wave” was not listed as stolen by INTERPOL.


BIBLIOGRAPHY:

Herbert, Robert L. “Monet on the Normandy Coast: Tourism and Painting, 1867-1886.” Yale University Press, 1996.

INTERPOL, stolen works of art database, https://www.interpol.int.

Fernier, Robert. Vie et l’oeuvre de Gustave Courbet: catalogue raisonné. Tome II, Pentures: 1866-1877, Fondation Wildenstein, 1978.

“Masterpiece is Stolen in Swansea,” Evening Post, October 25, 1957.


“Did a Fanatic Steal the Painting?”, Evening Post, October 26, 1957.


"Search goes on for picture thief," Evening Post, October 28, 1957.


"Art Gallery masterpiece stolen," Evening Post, October 26, 1957.

"Missing Painting," Evening Post, October 30, 1957.

December 8, 2009

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

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

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

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


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