Evgeni Svetoslavov Mutafchiev flew to Switzerland from Dubai on Sunday, July 6th.  His visit to Zurich wasn’t to buy Swiss chocolates. Rather, his discreet arrival marked the final step in removing a legal axe hanging over his head—charges filed in relation to a New York investigation into antiquities trafficking.

On July 7th, he surrendered, was arrested, arraigned. He pled guilty on July 8th to a State of New York charge of conspiracy in the fifth degree (N.Y. Penal Law §105.05[1]). During his hearing, he also agreed to waive his right to appeal his conviction and confirmed having forfeited $750,000, an amount representing his proceeds of crime that the New York District Attorney’s Office had reasonably proven.

Mutafchiev, more commonly known as Eugene Alexander, is a dual Bulgarian and American citizen who was born in Varna, Bulgaria, along the Black Sea. Before becoming entangled in the illicit antiquities trade, he once worked as a reporter for a local television station in his hometown, before moving on to a public relations role at the city’s National Archaeological Museum.

That all changed in 1984 when he moved to Munich and began working as an “art and antiquity investment consultant.” In 1998 he relocated again, this time to the United States, where he went on to earn a Master’s degree from Cleveland State University and a Doctorate from New York University. Now holding academic credentials centring on Greek and Roman history, Alexander quickly became involved in cultural property crime, emerging as a key person of interest in a sprawling New York investigation targeting the circulation of looted artefacts in the state, while various other countries looked into his financial flows as a suspect in money laundering.

New York Court filings and open-source analysis indicate that Alexander leveraged both his family ties and connections with senior government officials and TIM—which, according to law enforcement and the U.S. State Department, appears to be an organized crime syndicate incorporated as a holding company based in Varna that increasingly looks like Multigroup in its efforts to penetrate as many illegal sectors as possible. 

Alexander also actively circulated large numbers of looted antiquities, facilitating false provenance for some of the high-value objects he handled which were, then laundered forward through European and US ancient art dealers before being sold to wealthy collectors. To accomplish this, Alexander made use of a network of shell corporations and offshore banks identified as operating in Malta, Liechtenstein, the Crown Dependency of Jersey, and the Seychelles.

One of the most notable objects the New York hedge fund mogul bought from him was this1400–1200 BCE larnax—a small chest for human remains, painted with aquatic motifs.  The artefact was crafted in workshops near Rethymno on the island of Crete, a region which unfortunately as long been a frequent target of clandestine excavations and looting.  

Steinhardt paid Alexander $575,000 for the Larnax via Seychelles-based FAM Services via SATABANK —a Malta-based financial institution.  SATABANK was wholly owned by two entities (Christo Giorgiev and a private limited company), with Alexander being a 19.8% owner of SATABANK. In 2020, the European Central Bank revoked SATABANK’s banking license due to an on-going investigation into its money laundering.  This particular artefact was restored by Flavio Bertolin who reconstructed the Larnax from fragments.  It also appears in a photograph recovered from Steinhardt’s records which showed the Minoan container when it was freshly looted and still broken into several large fragments. 

As part of his trafficking scheme, Alexander cultivated sources across Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean, especially in Greece and Turkiye, where source country looters sent him photographs of freshly excavated artefacts. Once selected, the illicit material was then smuggled into Germany or the UK, where he arranged for the objects to be cleaned and restored, either by Flavio Bertolin in Munich or Darren Bradbury in London.  In some instances, plundered material would be  authenticated through thermoluminescence (TL) testing, conducted by Ralf Kotalla, who also supplied authenticity certificates to other suspect dealers with ties to illicit trafficking, including Gianfranco Becchina.

Once restored and prepared for market, many of Alexander's looted artefacts circulated with Fuat Üzülmez, a Turkish Syriac dealer born in Mardin, Turkye who ran Artemis Gallery in Munich.  Other were circulated with Hubert Lanz of Numismatik Lanz in Austria, or in the United States via Ward & Company, Fine Art in New York.  Dozens of these fresh finds were given vague provenance statements, such as “ex Geneva private collection, acquired in the early 1990s,” or, less frequently, “acquired in the early 1980s.”

Alexander's connection to trafficked material surfaced publicly according to a stipulation dated 6 September 2023, when Michael Ward agreed to plead guilty to Criminal Facilitation in the Fourth Degree (N.Y. Penal Law §115.00[1]).  As part of his plea agreement, he voluntarily surrendered 44 antiquities, valued at approximately $22 million, which he, or the District Attorney, had identified as having been sold, consigned, or previously held by Eugene Alexander. Ward also agreed to fully and truthfully cooperate with the prosecutor's continued investigation into Eugene Alexander's illegal activity.

According to Ward's charging document, during a multi-national investigation conducted in cooperation with the Manhattan ATU, US Homeland Security - HSI, and law enforcement units in Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom into Eugene Alexander, Michael Ward, and others cultural property crimes, German authorities carried out a raid on Alexander's apartment on 23 February 2022 in Germany.  There, they recovered, among many objects, Alexander's computers and various data drives.  On these officers recovered a series of photographs that various looters had sent to the dealer, many of which included depictions of plundered antiquities in a freshly looted state, prior to their being cleaned or restored. 

Over the course of this multi-year investigation, the Manhattan DA’s Antiquities Trafficking Unit (DANY) conducted a total of six seizures from Alexander, recovering an additional 67 looted antiquities which the DA estimates are worth $31 million. This brought the estimated total value of material seized in the US and connected to this single individual to just over $100 million.

Despite the damages done to the world's historical record, Alexander’s arrival to Switzerland this summer was low key and voluntary, coordinated in cooperation with the Manhattan DA's office and his defense attorneys, Elliot Sagor and Roger Stavis of Mintz & Gold’s White Collar Criminal Defense and Investigations practice.  Unlike other defendants wanted in New York in relation to other DANY antiquities investigations—such as Subhash Kapoor and Georges Lotfi—Alexander was not subject to an INTERPOL Red Notice, a request to law enforcement worldwide to locate and provisionally arrest a person pending extradition, surrender, or similar legal action.  Instead, his quiet arrival in Zurich signalled that broader cooperating negotiations were already in progress with US authorities, ultimately culminating in his trip to Switzerland, his guilty plea and sentencing.

What Comes Next?

The Eugene Alexander case sheds light not only on this interconnected trafficker's operations, but on the systemic mechanisms, within conservation sectors, the art market and in banking, that allow freshly looted illicit antiquities to circulate, via complex supply chains, while profits made by their sales can be channelled fluidly across borders and jurisdictions to offshore banks.

With Alexander's Zurich sojourn complete and his 8 July 2024 conviction confirmed, the New York District Attorney’s Office has officially concluded its case against him, as well as the state's case against his US associate, Michael Ward, who was convicted a year and a half earlier and who died this year on 19 March 2025.

To date, Alexander has not publicly addressed any of his legal entanglements, nor has he explained why, at least for a while, he elected to reside in Dubai—a known haven for individuals seeking to avoid extradition to Europe and the US.