Having surrendered in Germany in connection with a multi-country investigation into illicit antiquities trafficking, Serop Simonian was extradited to France, where he was indicted on 15 September 2023 for fraud, organized gang money laundering, and criminal association, in a complex where he is accused of selling more than €50 million worth of illegally excavated antiquities.

Placed in pre-trial detention while his case made its way through the French courts, his French lawyer, Chloé Arnoux, requested that the courts consider pretrial release under supervision, citing Simonian’s advanced age (born in 1942) and his deteriorating health.  Approaching his 83rd birthday, and sensitive to the fact that his attorney had listed a range of health problems—including osteoarthritis, intestinal issues, migraines, and depression—a liberty and detention judge signed off on his release from La Santé Prison, located in the Montparnasse district of the 14th arrondissement in southern Paris.

According to an article first published by Emmanuel Fansten in the French newspaper Libération, the judge granted his pretrial release on 31 December 2024. The judge ordered Simonian to report once a month to the Hamburg police station and not to leave Germany, except in relation to his upcoming court case.

Given the gravity of the octogenarian’s alleged crimes—and the extensive evidence uncovered by Junalco, France’s National Jurisdiction for the Fight Against Organized Crime, linking Simonian to a criminal network that trafficked looted Egyptian artifacts to prestigious institutions such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Louvre Abu Dhabi—the General Prosecutor of the Paris Court of Appeal formally challenged his release from custody. Citing Simonian’s significant financial resources and extensive international connections, the prosecutor argued that he posed a serious flight risk and urged the court to reconsider its decision to ensure he remained within the jurisdiction of French authorities.

Two weeks after Simonian was granted pretrial liberty, the investigating chamber held a hearing, which ultimately reversed the earlier release decision and ordered that he report back to La Santé prison. Unfortunately, by this point, he had disappeared.

Simonian's case illustrates that age is no barrier to flight, particularly when financial means, international connections, and open borders make travel easier.

One well-known example of a senior citizen on the lam is Israeli-American businessman Jacob “Kobi” Alexander, the former CEO of Comverse Technology, who was charged in 2006 with securities fraud and other financial crimes. While out on bail, Alexander transferred millions of dollars overseas and fled to Namibia, a nation that has no extradition treaty with the U.S. He lived there for a decade before voluntarily returning to the U.S. in 2016 to face sentencing.

Another case is that of Leonard “Fat Leonard” Francis, the defense contractor at the center of one of the largest bribery scandals in U.S. military history. Francis, who was in his late 60s, was granted house arrest pending trial on the grounds that he was being treated for kidney cancer. However, while awaiting sentencing, he cut off his GPS ankle monitor in September 2022 and fled the country. Authorities later captured him in Venezuela, but his escape underscored how older fugitives can exploit compassionate release during ongoing judicial proceedings.

The flights from justice of these individuals, as well as Simonian's (whose whereabouts remain unknown), highlight how gray-haired, white-collar criminals with the financial resources to do so can evade justice just as easily as their younger counterparts.

Update:  28 March 2025 Journalists with The Art Newspaper have spoken with Simonian's lawyer, Chloé Arnoux,  who, breaking her initial silence stated that the problematic dealer was now at an assisted living facility near his family in Hamburg.   In another article Arnoux is quoted as saying "He was not notified in a language he understands that there was an appeal against his release."

No mention was made however explaining why she failed to explain this to her client given she would have been privy to the Court's decision as Simonian's counsel, or why, up until now he had not obeyed the French ruling to return to prison to await his trial. 

ARCA summers are pretty busy as each year.  Since 2009, the Association has hosted its multi-course Postgraduate Certificate Program in Art Crime and Cultural heritage which often means posting new developments in the art and antiquities crime sphere slow while we turn our attention towards trainees.  Now that the 13th edition of this annual PG Cert has concluded, we can take time to reflect on some of the summer's more interesting art and antiquities stories, two which involve the ancient art gallery, Phoenix Ancient Art.

More pieces, More Accusations

Back on the 15th of May, Gotham City, a French-speaking Swiss news website that focuses on white-collar crime reported that Ali Aboutaam, the Geneva-based ancient art dealer was again in hot water with the public prosecutor's office.  Despite his previous conviction in January 2023, where he received an 18-month suspended prison sentence,  Ali Aboutaam is again the focus of a new Swiss investigation.

According to the Geneva public prosecutor's office, Ali is alleged to have possessed two suspect alabaster (brucite) statues, representing a man and a woman, while, according to Gotham's reporting, he “knew that these cultural properties had been illicitly acquired during illegal excavations in Yemen”.  Assessed by art historians, at least one of the small statues is believed to come from an area located in the southern Yemeni plateau known for the immense Himyarite Kingdom .  The area is home to a large necropolis, Shuka, which dates to the 1st-3rd centuries CE and has been the focus of looting in varying periods.

Dat-Hamin Stele

In their research to prepare for their upcoming auction, Sotheby's staff discovered that the stele had been photographed and documented as a part of the Aden Museum's collection in Yemen.  The artefact had been looted in July 1994 during what is referred to as the Summer War, a civil war fought between the two Yemeni forces of the pro-union northern and the socialist separatist southern Yemeni states and their various supporters.  Relinquished by the dealers, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) ultimately seized the stele in September 2003, and the stela was officially signed over to the Yemeni ambassador in December 2004.

Following that civil war, Yemen implemented wider legal protections for its cultural heritage, although instability resulting from the present-day civil war continues to make enforcement difficult.  Law Number 21 of 1994 on Antiquities, as amended by Law Number 8 of 1997, is the primary law governing ancient sites and objects in the country.  

This law defines Yemen's “archaeological” materials; vests their ownership in the State, and controls their protection, conservation, restoration, and study.  It addresses aspects of ownership, permissions and obligations for archaeological work, introduces penalties for the illegal trade, and sets duties and guidelines on how to deal with discovered and excavated objects.  

As such, it will be interesting to evaluate what documents Phoenix possesses in support of their circulation of these two objects in Switzerland, which are presently of interest to that country's public prosecutor. 

Moving on to Taxes...

On 18 July 2024 Switzerland's Bundesgericht, the country's Federal Supreme Court in Lucerne issued several ruling impacting Ali Aboutaam.  Judgments 9C_107, 9C_184, 9C_187 and 203/2023 of 18 July 2024, issued by Federal Judges Thomas Stadelmann as the Presiding Judge, along with Judges Margit Moser-Szeless and Michael Beusch, rejected a series of complex appeals, made through the art dealer's attorneys, concerning outstanding tax assessments in relation to the importation of a group of antiquities, some housed outside the gallery and outside the Ports Francs et Entrepôts de Genève. 

In rejecting Aboutaam's appeals, the higher court's final rulings reaffirms that the Swiss-based brother has to pay approximately 3.5 million Swiss francs ($4,125,444.82) in outstanding value-added tax (VAT), as assessed by the Bundesamt für Zoll und Grenzsicherheit (Federal Customs Administration) and largely affirmed by the Federal Administrative Court.  Ali was also ordered to pay late interest payments totalling approximately 900,000 Swiss francs (another $1,060,995.36).

In November 2021, Aboutaam had originally handed a SFr 1.6m fine via Swiss customs, including the costs of the proceedings.  The tax authorities came after the antiquities dealer in that instance after Phoenix Ancient Art imported 37 million Swiss francs worth of antiquities into Switzerland between 2010 and 2017, but without paying the applicable VAT. 

The alleged primary brokers and handlers of these artefacts include France-based art broker Christophe Kunicki, Hamburg-based art dealer Roben Dib, and Dib's business partner Serop Simonian, an art dealer of Armenian origin, born in Egypt, who also resides in Germany. 

Suspected of playing a central role in the sale of illegally excavated antiquities, Christophe Kunicki and Richard Semper were taken into custody on June 22, 2020 and charged with with gang fraud and money laundering. Both were released from French custody on June 26, 2020, with judicial supervision orders pending their trial outcome.  

Suspected by US and French authorities of playing a central role in the sale of suspect antiquities to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Louvre Abu Dhabi, Roben Dib, a director at Dionysos Ancient Coins & Antiquities was taken into French custody in March 2022, shortly after posting a €600,000 bail in Germany. 

Held in pretrial detention for seven months at the Centre pénitentiaire de Fresnes, Val-de-Marne, south of Paris, Dibs is released from French custody in October 2022 with an order of judicial supervision pending trial, alongside an additional €350,000 French bail condition.  Dibs was rearrested on January 10, 2023, and brought before a judge, who released him the same day with a stern advisory, that if the outstanding balance of his French bail requirement was not paid in full, he would again be subject to pre-trial detention. 

Today, the Investigating Chamber of the Paris Court of Appeal rejected both Martinez and Charnier's defence counsels requests to lift the “mise en examen” (the indictment by the investigating judge in the context of a judicial investigation) and confirmed that both the former president of the Louvre and the former scientific director remain under indictment.  Martinez has been indicted for laundering and complicity in organised fraud.  Charnier has been indicted for laundering by facilitating the false justification of the origin of the property of the author of a crime, or a misdemeanour, and placed under judicial control." 

Through their lawyers, both Martinez and Charnier have indicated they will appeal today's court decision.  Both remain free on judicial supervision while their case proceeds through the French court.

The OCBC's investigation built upon collaborative investigations with the New York County - Manhattan's Antiquities Trafficking Unit, who first unravelled the network of traffickers during their investigation into the illicit trafficking of the ancient gold mummiform coffin, inscribed in the name of Nedjemankh.  Like in the New York case, the French case centers on artefacts which were laundered by means of falsified documents, in particular false invoices and export licenses.

"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."