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April 22, 2022

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Save the Date/Call for Presenters: August 5-7, 2022 ARCA's 11th Annual Art Crime Conference

Conference Date:  
August 5-7, 2022
Abstract Submittal Deadline:  
June 15, 2022
Location: Amelia, Italy

Celebrating a decade of academic conferences, after a two year hiatus due to the COVID Pandemic ARCA will host its 11th summer interdisciplinary art crime conference the weekend of August 5-7, 2022. 

Known as the Amelia Conference, the Association's weekend-long event aims to facilitate a critical appraisal of art crimes and the protection of art and cultural heritage and brings together researchers and academics, police, and individuals from many of the allied professions that interact with the art market, coming together to discuss issues of common concern. 

The Amelia Conference is an annual ARCA event, held in the historic city of Amelia, in the heart of Italy's Umbria region where ARCA also plays host to its Postgraduate Certificate Program in Art Crime and Cultural Heritage Protection.

Given this conference date has been shifted until late summer, ARCA has extended its call for presenters and welcomes speaking proposals from individuals in relevant fields, including law, criminal justice, security, art history, conservation, archaeology, or museum security and risk management on the topical sessions listed here. We invite individuals interested in presenting to submit their topic of choice along with a presentation title, a concise 400-word abstract, a brief professional biography and a recent CV to the conference organizers at:

italy.conference [at] artcrimeresearch.org

Accepted presenters will be asked to limit their presentations to a maximum of 15-20 minutes, and will be grouped together in thematically-organized panels in order to allow time for brief questions from the audience and fellow panelists.  

Registration:
To register for this event, please go to our Eventbrite page located here.



Conference Lodging:
To celebrate a decade of hosting the Amelia Conference, ARCA has decided to shake things up a bit.  This year we encourage conference attendees to consider booking with Country House Monastero le Grazie, an enchanting centuries-old Cistercian monastery adjacent to the Church and Sanctuary of Santa Maria delle Grazie, built in 1300.  This unique conference lodging venue is located in the hamlet of Foce, just a few kilometers outside the centro storico of Amelia.


Built for a Roman Catholic monastic order founded in 1098 by St. Bernard, those who joined the Cistercians sought to live a contemplative life in a protected oasis of peace and introspection, while offering refuge for pilgrims and weary travellers. This mindset fits perfectly with the tone of the conference ARCA hopes to establish each summer.  And today, this historic former monastery has been converted into an evocative boutique events residence which offers ARCA’s conference attendees a lodging experience in a spectacular setting unlike any other.

Lodgers at the Monastero le Grazie can choose rooms in one of 16 apartments spread out within the central body of the monastery and arranged on two floors, some with loft features overlooking common areas. Each of these once monastic apartments has been recently updated and contains from one to up to six comfortable bedrooms with adjacent communal living spaces. Many of the apartment bedrooms have private bathrooms (with bath or shower), hairdryer, courtesy kit and linen. Some second bedrooms are located on loft mezzanines overlooking common areas.   

On site the Monastary has a restaurant, a large swimming pool, breakout rooms, a small bar, a panoramic terrace and two hectares of garden where guests can sit or take a walk. 

Conference attendees making their lodging reservations at the Monastero not only support local Umbrian small business owners but will also have a chance to support and preserve (and experience) a unique residential experience from Italy’s past.  

Those staying at the monastery will also be just steps away from the conference's Friday Icebreaker Cocktail which will be held on the terrace of the monastery’s gardens.  The theme this year is the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s. 

Likewise, a stay in a monastery invariably means great food, too as Italians have a saying: “Nobody eats better than a monk.”  With that in mind, this year's Saturday’s Gala Conference dinner will be catered at the Monastery's  slow food restaurant, “Il Ristoro del Priore”.



Attendees selecting lodging at the Monastero will be provided with transport to and from the conference hall venue in the centro storico of Amelia (7 minutes away by car) on the morning and evening of Saturday and Sunday so as to be able to attend all conference sessions.

We look forward to seeing you this August. If you have any questions about the call to presenters, want to book conference lodging at the Monastero or have any other conference related questions, please feel free to write to us at: italy.conference@artcrimeresearch.org

We hope to see many of you in Amelia in August!

April 11, 2022

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Potential CITES violations and a seizure of specimens from one (of many) large hunted animals collections in Spain.

Image Credit:  Guardia Civil, Spain

It wasn't until an October 9,  2019 El Pais journalist Manual Ansede wrote an article about the hunting compulsion of Spain's Marcial Gómez Sequeira showing hundreds of animals mounted on taxidermy stands at his luxury chalet in La Moraleja (Alcobendas) in North Madrid.

In general though, over the years, the public hasn't taken much notice of country's wealthy gentlemen and their hunting obsessions.  But, as the result of that article, the Spanish national police opened an investigation, looking into potential violations of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, CITES, the international agreement between governments which aims to ensure that international trade in specimens of wild animals and plants does not threaten the survival of the species.

When interviewed for the El Pais article, collector Marcial Gómez Sequeira told journalist Ansede that he estimated, if he added all his hunting trips together, that he had been firing bullets into animals for 24 hours a day over the course of 11 years and three months of his life.   All the while hiding in plain sight while proudly  documenting his kills in multiple forums on film and in print. 

Sequeira's wealth cam from the company Sanitas, founded in 1954 by a group of Spanish doctors, including Marcial Gómez Gil, the father of Marcial Gómez Sequeira, who became the firms first CEO as majority shareholder. In the 1960s when his father left that position the role fell to his son, who remained the majority shareholder of the company until 1988.

Marcial Gómez Sequeira has stated that he went on his first hunting safari in 1971, in Mozambique where he claimed he paid 60,000 pesetas (€360) and was responsible for shooting some 35 species, including a zebra, a lion, a hippopotamus and an elephant. After that he starts hunting/collecting seriously and over the next 48 years has told reporters he went on hunting safaris three or four times per year.

Not the sole wealthy Spaniard with a passion for holding a gun, in 1973 Marcial Gómez Sequeira’s is known to have been on a hunting trip in Persia (Iran) at the invitation of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, at the Shah’s hunting reserve. There he met the future King of Spain, Juan Carlos I, who had also been invited by the Shah’s brother.  The pair would go on to hunt with one another on occasion afterwards. 

In 1988 as the majority shareholder of Sanitas, Marcial Gómez Sequeira sold his shares in the company to British multinational BUPA for almost 22 billion pesetas, the equivalent of €130 million.  In doing so, in doing so, he failed to declare in personal income tax, the capital gains from the sale of his shares, some 9,541 million pesetas, or the equivalent of 57 million euros.  In the later 2019 El Pais article, Gómez Sequeira reported that he had used the proceeds earned from his company's sale to further pursue his trophy hunting, stating:

“Three years ago I tried to calculate the time I have spent hunting,” ...“I worked out that I had been shooting for 24 hours a day over the course of 11 years and three months of my life. Firing bullets non-stop.”

October 2011 
Between 2011 and 2014 Marcial Gómez Sequeira’s authored three books on his hunts: 
Últimas cruzadas (The Last Crusades), with a prologue by Norbert Ullmann and Jesús Caballero.  His 190-page memoir, with numerous color photographs, maps and sketches, collects, as its name suggests, the author's last hunts in the former Soviet Union, with an epilogue of five other mountain hunts.

Aventuras de ahora y siempre describing his hunting in places like Cameroon,  Canada, Gredos, los Puertos de Tortosa-Beceite and Batuecas.

2014 Facebook Photo of Stiliyan Kadrev
"Un año increíble" which catalogues kills in Africa, the Caucasus, Central Europe and the Philippines.

In 2016 Buglarian big game journalist and sometimes hunting companion Stiliyan Kadrev filmed the draw of the Big Game market in Spain and the animals killed by Marcial Gómez Sequeira inside his Madrid home.  He also documented the Spanish millionaire's November 2015 trip to Tallinn, Estonia for guided trophy Elk hunting as well as a trip to the taiga forests in Russia hunting for Eurasian lynx.  By this point, Kadrev documents that Gómez Sequeira has already accumulated specimens from 370 species. 


Continuing on with the latest trend in the big game industry which entices wealthy hunters into killing animals of unusual colours for sport, Marcial Gómez Sequeira travelled to South Africa on a game hunting trip with his 15-year-old grandson.  There, the owners of ranches auction off uniquely coloured members of any one species after raising them in captivity. During this safari he admits to having killed a golden wildebeest, a black impala, a golden oryx and a copper-coloured Springbok.  

By March 2019 Guillermo Fernández Vara and the mayor of Olivenza, Manuel González Andrade (PSOE) had established a preliminary agreement to set up the Marcial Gómez Sequeira Collection Hunting Museum, which had aims of displaying some 1,250 trophy kills by the collector inside an 18th-century building known as the Cavalry Barracks in the village of Olivenza, in one of Spain’s poorest regions, Extremadura.  

The preliminary agreement signed by Gómez Sequeira and Fernández Vara was to involve handing the collection over to a new semi-public foundation and calculating its financial value so that Extremadura authorities can invest half of that again. 

Talking with the reporter, Gómez Sequeira strolled through his home explaining where each animal was hunted and killed. There, the reporter noted a leopard from Zimbabwe, a tiger from Thailand, a lion from South Africa, an ocelot wildcat from Mexico, a cheetah from Namibia, a white rhinoceros from Angola, a wolf from Alaska, a monkey from Cameroon, an armadillo from the US, an African golden cat from Liberia, a spotted hyena from Mozambique, a crocodile from Tanzania and even a polar bear from Canada.

Each of the stuffed animals documented represented just some of the animals Marcial Gómez Sequeira has killed in his world travels for big and small game hunting. In total the collector himself estimated that he has thousands of taxidermied animals, including more than 420 species.

After the article's publication, the mayor of Olivenza, Manuel González Andrade withdrew his support for the collector's proposed hunting museum, writing on Facebook saying: 

"This project does not represent us, it does not represent the men and women of this town, nor does it represent the future of progress in Olivenza, which is why it will not be given space in any public municipal building."

By November 2021 and as public outcry increased with the attention the El Pais article drew, Spanish police opened an investigation into Gómez Sequeira's hunting/collecting practices to determine if the collector has been involved in the alleged trafficking of protected species. 

As a result of this investigation, Gómez Sequeira is unable to produce the import and handling paperwork documenting 49 animal specimens on taxidermy mounts, four elephant tusks, four hippopotamus canines, two rhinoceros horns and 132 carved ivory pieces.  Each of these was seized and taken to the National Museum of Natural Science in Madrid.

In a follow-up newspaper article, Gómez Sequeira claimed that some of the animals in question were acquired before the CITES global convention on the trade of endangered species went into effect in 1975. 

Likewise, the Valencia police's Nature Protection Team, begin looking into another Spanish hunter's collection. 

Image Credit:  Guardia Civil


Inside the storage facility officers working  operación “VALCITES” located the preserved remains of cheetahs, leopards, lions, lynxes, polar bears, white rhinos and a total of 198 elephant tusks, not to mention the cut off feet of elephants, the bounty of a lifetime of serial killing for gratification. 

In total the officers documented 405 specimens representing species considered protected by CITES, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora.  Those included a scimitar oryx, declared extinct in the wild by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) in 2000 and specimens representing the severely threatened addax or white antelope and the Bengal tiger.

While the name of the owner of the specimens involved in this seizure was not mentioned in the Guardia Civil's announcement,  Marcial Gómez Sequeira is not the only Spaniard with an insatiable desire for blood sport.  Tony Sanches-Arino, another of the country's major sports hunters, has logged some 4,044 kills (1,317 being elephants).  And this week's seizure is believed to be the inherited property of one of the sons of well-known Valencian businessman Francisco Ros Casares, the steel entrepreneur and former president of Valencia CF, who died in 2014. 

ARCA wishes wealthy people would simply take up golf. It has a lower carbon footprint than rampant blood sport, and white men, chasing little white balls are less likely to upset the delicate balance the world's wildlife. 

April 8, 2022

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What about the well known looted vases in the Altes Museum in Berlin?

Left: Medici Archive Polaroid with fragments of the Crater of Persephone,
attributed to the Painter of the Underworld,
Right: 4th century BCE crater as seen at the Altes Museum, Berlin

Tonight there was an interesting plot twist to this year's formal demand by the Public Prosecutor's Offices of Rome and Foggia, who in late January 2022 issued two confiscation decrees, the first from the Gip of Foggia, and the second from the Gip of Rome, Alessandro Arturi, at the request of the Procura del Tribunale Capitolino. These European confiscation orders were sent with an international rogatory request through the Directorate General for International Affairs and Judicial Cooperation of the Ministry of Justice asking for the return of 21 ornate South Italian artefacts currently on exhibition in Germany.   Tonight, at 20:30 CET, on RAI tg24  Spotlight, journalists, archaeologists, curators, and carabinieri officers discuss these artefacts' murky origins.  All the while the viewing audience got to see the overly simplified foot-dragging reticence of the management at the Altes Museum in Berlin towards Italy's determination to prove the illicit nature of these pieces, and to get these objects back.  

Many of the spectacular contested artefacts, date to the 4th century BCE and fall into distinct workshop groups, giving us a rich opportunity to examine how the peoples native to southern Italy used Greek myth to comprehend death and the afterlife in their funerary customs.  Some of the Apulian vessels share stylistic markings which demonstrate that they likely were created by the same attributed "hands", leading Italian experts to strongly believe that the artefacts may have been derived from a singular burial grouping.  

The artisans represented include the Group of Copenhagen 4223, the Varrese painter, the Darius painter, and the Underworld painter.  All of the artefacts had at one point been broken into fragments before being carefully restored and sold on to Wolf Dieter Heilmayer between 1983 and 1984, then at the Berlin archaeological museum located in West Germany.  The German museum director purchased these artefacts via Christoph Leon for 3 million German marks, under the pretext that they had been purportedly part of a historic collection belonging to a Basel family named the Cramers. 

In reality, the red figure vases are believed by the Italian authorities to have been looted, having once adorned a large chamber tomb, likely near Taranto, the coastal city and production centre in southern Italy from c. 430 - c. 300 BCE where many of these vases originate.  The single tomb grouping is something that Martin Maischberger, Deputy Director of the Collection of Classical Antiquities of the National Museums in Berlin contested during his interview, saying that most massive volute-kraters are found in pairs, not in groupings of seven, (three alone attributed to the Darius painter) like those purchased with the fictitious Cramer provenance bought by the museum director's predecessors.  

Strikingly, the German director doesn't take into consideration the wealth of material found at other sites in the Southern half of Italy, sites like Ruvo and the richness of its own tomb-groups or other impressive object groupings from the tombs at Gravina and Rutigliano in Peucetia, where contacts with both Greece and Etruscan painters clearly demonstrate tombs proportionately rich in burial goods. 

While not all the artefacts in the Berlin Tomb group appear in photographs in the now famous Medici Archive, four of them are, and point clearly towards the illicit nature of these finds.  

In this case, in three different groupings of Polaroids, specifically:
  • one grouping of fifteen photographs, 
  • one grouping of six photographs,
  • and one grouping of two photographs. 
All three sets of images depict artefacts now in the Altes Museum in various stages of restoration, the most important of which is the exceptional krater by the Darius Painter.

Giacomo Medici archive photos of looted artefacts
presently on display at the Altes Museum

While not all of the Apulian artefacts have a "smoking gun" looter photo, the names attached to this transaction are the same, and have been problematic in the past. 

The former head of archaeology at Geneva Museum, Jacques Chamay had previously announced that his research had begun after he had examined a fragment of one of the vases in the Cramer family’s old library, though in tonight's program, reached by phone, he had nothing to say. 

Discounting the judicially soft, but diplomatically polite, cultural diplomacy negotiations as "informal", which up until January had been the preferred approach of the Carabinieri and the Procura of Foggia,  Dr. Maischberger at the Altes Museum remarked that the European confiscation request was the first time the museum had been formally asked to give back the vases.  In this instance, it seems the museum decided the Italian's less stick, more carrot approach meant they weren't serious or that a decision could be avoided?  In either case, asking nicely didn't incentivise or compel the museum's management towards restitution because only 4 of the disputed artefacts have definitive proof of looting photos seized from Giacomo Medici's storage facility on the fourth floor of the Ports Francs & Entrepôts de Genève, specifically Corridor 17, Room 23, on the 13th of September 1995.   

Giacomo Medici at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

During the Italian Spotlight news broadcast, Italians also heard from someone at the heart of Italy's illicit art market and the original holder of the Medici Polaroids, Giacomo Medici himself. 

Interviewed on camera for the first time, by investigative journalist Raffaella Cosentino, the former antiquities dealer seemed both soundly arrogant and at times cagy, admitting little even under direct questioning.  He avoided answering tough questions and instead preferred to underscore that he had served his time and paid his fines.  He also reminded his interviewer that in some instances the judicial process did not prove conclusively he had committed certain crimes.  

While Medici matter of factly talked about the seven boxes of photographs returned to him at the closure of his court case, he skipped over the fact that these images  represent the massive corpus of some 4000 artefacts that he handled during his years as an antiquities dealer.  He also failed to mention that he cultivated contacts among Italy's impoverished tombaroli, other wealthy corrupt dealers, Museum directors and conservators, who all turned a blind eye to the less than pristine origins of his wares.  Instead he preferred to mention loopholes or that he sold his antiquities of Switzerland, because Italy had rules against selling objects illicitly excavated. 

For what it is worth, and as a reminder, on 13 December 2004 Giacomo Medici was charged with receiving stolen goods, illegal export of goods, and conspiracy to traffic via the Tribunal of Rome. The judge found that more than 95% of Medici’s antiquities—both those found in his Geneva warehouse as well as those depicted in the 4,000 seized photographs— were looted from Italy. Therefore, concerning the 3,800 antiquities recovered from the Geneva warehouse, the judge ordered the confiscation of approximately 3,400. Of the 400 that were not confiscated, 258 were returned to Switzerland: 179 because they had been looted in Greece, from sites on Paros, Crete, and the mainland (and, therefore, not subject to Italian law), and 79 because they were not authentic (and, therefore, were not the subject of the criminal investigation). For fewer than 150 of the 3,800 hundred antiquities—3.9% of his collection—did Medici provide any prior provenance.

On 15 July 2009 the Italian Appellate Court affirmed Medici's convictions for receiving stolen goods and conspiracy relating to the illicit trafficking of antiquities.  The affirmed a sentence of eight years of imprisonment alongside a €10 million fine, while the final count, for trafficking, was eliminated due to the expiry of the statute of limitations. 

Despite appealing the Appellate Court's ruling via Italy's Court of Cassation, on 7 December 2011 Giacomo Medici's final appeal was rejected.   Born in 1938 and already a senior citizen by that point, he was allowed to serve his judicial punishment primarily on house arrest at his villa in Santa Marinella, shortened by time off for good behaviour. 

By:  Lynda Albertson


April 4, 2022

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The sometimes slow and sometimes fast return of historical artefacts pillaged from Libya


Cyrene, Northern Necropolis.
The Sculptured Tomb/Cassels from Pacho 1827

Parallel with the start of the First Libyan Civil War, the Security Directorate of Shahat, in the eastern coastal region of Libya, implemented a series of works in an attempt to address the looting and destruction of moveable and immovable heritage from the tangle of ruins known as the seventh century BCE  city of Cyrene.  Faced with rising civil unrest, the outbreak of wars, and unchecked and destructive urban encroachment, Ismail Dakhil, an official at the museums department of eastern Libya, estimated that as much as 30 percent of the ancient city may have been encroached upon due to urban expansion.

Despite Libyan archaeologists, officials, and academics doing all they can to protect and maintain their country’s heritage, often with only very limited resources, and sometimes at great personal risk, the extent of recent destruction of the rock-cut tombs and ancient structures at Cyrene is vividly illustrated in this July 2013 photograph.  The heartbreaking image clearly shows an operator's Hyundai Robex 250 LC-7 crawler excavator clearing land for development inside a stretch of the city's ancient necropolis. 


There, in abject disregard for the ancient burial vaults and sarcophagi below the treads of the construction vehicle, makeshift developers rashly transformed a swath of the archaeological site into a modern construction zone.  Before they could be stopped, these individuals crushed, destroyed, or dumped into waterways what Greek, Hellenistic, Roman and Byzantine Cyrenaica remains they came across, some of which dated as far back as 600 BCE.

Along with urban encroachment, insufficient security and a complicated political terrain has made Libya's rich archaeological heritage a vulnerable target for looting.  During the last two decades, according to the research of prominent forensic archaeologists, many of the territory's majestic Hellenistic sculptures have been plundered, only to turn up for sale on the ancient art market with little or fabricated provenance.  Many of the most beautiful of these pieces have turned up with, or have been sold through well known gallerists in London, Paris, Switzerland, Barcelona, and the United States. 

To illustrate the seriousness of the problem, the remainder of this article will be dedicated to four artefacts that have just gone home, identified in four separate US investigations of varying lengths and complexities.  Each of these artefacts made the long journey back home to Libya last week, and each were seized and relinquished as the price sometimes paid for trading in illicit material, and in one case, from wantonly collecting material with an absolute and total disregard for an object's legitimacy. 

Artefact #1

Cyrene Deity Head - Belzic Dt.54 *

The first, and oldest, is a fourth-to-third-century BCE Head of a Veiled Woman, (Cyrene Deity Head - Belzic Dt.54) which was recovered as part of an 11-year Federal investigation code named “Operation Lost Treasure,” led by HSI-ICE in New York, in conjunction with the U.S. Department of State and U.S. Customs and Border Protection. This 13 inch tall by 10 inches wide marble head was seized by US authorities while monitoring the shipments and way bills of a known problematic Sharjah-based antiquities dealer.  The artefact was being shipped to a sometimes collector, sometimes dealer operating in New York.  Unfortunately, this was not the only plundered artefact from Cyrene the UAE dealer knowingly handled, nor was America the only country where buyers for Libya's plundered material could easily be found.  

Freshly looted, this severed head of a divinity had been shipped out of Libya and made her way into the United States unwashed by her handlers.  As a specimen of the wonders of Cyrenaica's past, her expressive face still retains some of the underdrawing pigment used by her creator to outline and define her eyes.   

Officers involved in the U.S. investigation would go on to provide assistance to London investigators when this same dealer, continuing to ply his illegal trade in the lucrative London market, shipped yet another plundered funerary statue from Cyrene to the United Kingdom just three years after this New York seizure.  In the US case, Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) International Operations Division Chief Leo Lin formally handed over this sculpture to the safekeeping of the Libyan Embassy in Washington DC,  where it has remained until its journey home was finalised last week. 

Artefact #2

Cyrene Deity- Steinhardt-Albertson Dt.76*

The second artefact, the Veiled Head of a Female, as named in the Michael Steinhardt Agreement, was formally surrendered by the New York collector in early December 2021.  It is thought to be the head of a 2.5 meter tall 3rd - 2nd century BCE funerary monument representing a half-figure goddess.  One of just ten known to archaeologists from the Necropolis of Cyrene, before its plunder, this strikingly rare sculpture once adorned one of only six or seven monumental tombs located in the ancient city.   

The sculpture had been seized during the lengthy investigation into the highly questionable collecting practices of billionaire Michael Steinhardt, begun in New York in February 2017.  Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's team, lead by Chief of the Antiquities Trafficking Unit and Senior Trial Counsel Matthew Bogdanos, along with Supervising Investigative Analyst Apsara Iyer and Investigative Analysts Alyssa Thiel and Daniel Healey gathered evidence which demonstrated that the Veiled Head of a Female first surfaced on the international art market on 20 November 2000 when Michael Steinhardt purchased Dt.76 from Michael L. Ward, a dealer in New York with three business entities: 
  • Michael Ward & Co.
  • Michael Ward Inc.,
  • Ward & Company Works of Art LLC.
On his invoice, Ward noted the Veiled Head of a Female was “possibly from North Africa” and “a light brown earthy deposit uniformly covering the head imparts to its surfaces an attractive, warm patina.” This “earthy deposit” is thought by some experts to have been applied after the object was looted as it serves to lessen the noticeability of small chips and breakage on the surface of the artefact, a likely sign of rough handling by its looters.  

The ancient sculpture was sold to Steinhardt with no prior provenance for $1,200,000. 

Discussing the seized sculpture with Morgan Belzic, a PhD researcher at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Études specialising in Cyrenaican Funerary Sculptures, under the direction of François Queyrel, he concurred with my preliminary observation that this head of a deity, with its telltale coloration and diadem, had to originate from Cyrene.  Belzic has made a name for himself, having noted a correlation between the increasing destruction of funerary monuments in Libya and the uptick in the appearance of ancient pieces from Cyrene on the market statistically out of range with those appearing in the market prior to the country's destabilisation.

As an expert on the sculptural remains of Libya's Greek cities, Belzic cooperates with national and international law enforcement authorities, including the Manhattan DA's office and the Libyan Department of Antiquities and has identified plundered and suspect objects originating from the Libyan cities of Shahat (Cyrene), Susa (Apollonia), Tocra (Taucheira), Tulmaytha (Ptolemais), and Benghazi (Euesperides/Berenike).  

Working closely with a multinational coalition of archaeological missions in Libya under the coordination of the French Archaeological Mission, lead by Vincent Michel, this group of allied researchers has provided critical evidence in law enforcement investigations identifying sculptures of high concern originating from Cyrenaica. 

The Manhattan District Attorney's office concluded its multi-year, multi-national criminal investigation into Steinhardt's ancient art collection in 2021.  In total, their work resulted in the seizure and forfeiture of 180 plundered antiquities valuing an estimated total of $70 million and imposing the first-of-its-kind lifetime ban on acquiring antiquities ever handed down to a collector. But this investigation is important for the history books not only for that reason but also because the case underscores and exemplifies the successes prosecutors can have when a) focusing almost exclusively on art and antiquities cases, b) working collaboratively with other law enforcement agencies and c) exercising the willingness to work with a group of forensic researchers who specialise in looted and stolen antiquities from specific regions or cultures. 

Handover Ceremony in Manhattan

Through the collaborative work of the DA's team, with the coordinated help of Special Agents Robert Mancene, Robert Fromkin, and John Labatt of Homeland Security Investigations, in this one case alone, the DA's office successfully identified 169 of the 180 seized antiquities as having been trafficked by a total of 12 different criminal smuggling networks.  The remaining eleven forfeited antiquities, including this one, first appeared on the international art market in the hands of dealers more concerned with the artefact's sales value than with closely examining the provenance of objects that come from countries plagued by civil unrest, war, and/or rampant looting. 


Artefact #3
Cyrene Deity Head - Belzic Dt.22*

While the exact dates of when the 3rd to 2nd century BCE, Belzic Dt.22, was looted from Cyrene is unknown, it is believed that this sculpture may have been stolen in the 1980s and then smuggled into Egypt by antiquities traffickers.  Investigators in New York have proven that it was eventually shipped onward to the United States, where it appeared on the US ancient art market in 1997.  According to investigators, the artefact demonstrated the “telltale signs of looting such as earth on the surface and new chips at the base and in the veil.”

By 1998, and now referred to as the Veiled Head of a Lady, and head had been valued at nearly half a million dollars and was placed on loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York by an anonymous donor, where it was catalogued simply as a Greek Hellenistic funerary head and mislabelled as being from the 4th century BCE. 

The veiled head remained on display at the Met for more than twenty years.  After being identified as having come from Cyrene, the sculpture was seized during an investigation conducted by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's team, lead by Chief of the Antiquities Trafficking Unit and Senior Trial Counsel Matthew Bogdanos, along with Supervising Investigative Analyst Apsara Iyer and Investigative Analysts Alyssa Thiel and Daniel Healey in February 2022.  Note that the Met and DANY have declined to identify the lender at this time, given the sensitivity of ongoing investigations.

Prior to its formal transfer back home to Libya, the Veiled Head of a Female was handed over to the Libyan authorities on 30 March 2022 along with Artefact 4 during a repatriation ceremony attended by the Charge d’Affaires of the Embassy of Libya in DC Khaled Daief, and U.S. Homeland Security Investigations (“HSI”) Acting Deputy Special Agent-in-Charge Mike Alfonso.

Artefact #4

Cyrene Portrait Head - Belzic P.97*

After being smuggled from Libya to Geneva, Switzerland, Morgan Belzic first identified this 2nd century CE marble Cyrenaican Funerary portrait of a bearded man on the ancient art market in November 2018.  When documented, it was being offered for an estimated sales price of $19,000.  

Originally placed in a tomb rich with small niches, there are more than 250 Cyrene portraits of this category recorded by scholars studying the ancient remains of Libya.  The iconographic styling of this type of portrait head is so unique to Cyrenaican funerary imagery that this category of sculpture is referred to in scientific literature as a ‘Romano-Libyan’ portrait. 

The marble head of a man was next offered for sale two years later, in June of 2020, this time in Manhattan and with an asking price of $25,000 - $35,000.  But it is the third sale which turns out to be the charm, resulting in the fastest seizure to restitution of an artefact in history.  

Belzic P-97 was spotted for the third time on 28 March 2022, this time by art historian Camille Blancher, just shy of its next intended sale date through another USA antiquities dealer.  Through the responsive and collaborative efforts of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's antiquities unit, working in close coordination with Special Agents Robert Mancene and Robert Fromkin of Homeland Security Investigations the bearded head of a man was seized on Tuesday, March 29th, back in the Manhattan DA's office where it was handed over to the Libyan authorities on Wednesday, March 30th, along with Artefact 3 during a repatriation ceremony attended by the Charge d’Affaires of the Embassy of Libya in DC Khaled Daief, and U.S. Homeland Security Investigations (“HSI”) Acting Deputy Special Agent-in-Charge Mike Alfonso.

Support for this case came from members of a coalition of archaeological missions working in Libya under the coordination of the French Archaeological Mission as well as from ARCA, all of whom are deeply committed in assisting Libyan institutions and authorities in enforcing the protection of cultural heritage in Libya and who voiced their collective concerns to the DANY regarding the artefact's potential sale. 

To put a nice bow on this story, all four marble funerary sculptures, along with a small grouping of terracotta urns and fragments, were flown via private jet, paid for by a philanthropist, to Mitiga International Airport in Libya.  Arriving to Tripoli on Thursday, April 1st, the repatriation of these antiquities is a “peace dividend” as described by Director-General of the United Nations Regional Institute for Crime and Justice Research (UNICRI) Antonia Marie de Meo, who led a delegation to Libya alongside James Shaw, Chief of that agency's Asset Recovery and Illicit Financial Flows programme.  Also on board was forensic archaeologist Morgan Belzic, who more than anyone, truly understood the efforts, coordination and cooperation, these four recoveries required. 

The handover ceremony took place at the Museum of Libya inside the former royal palace of Qasr al-Khild in Tripoli. Like other museums in Libya, it has remained closed to the public since the 2011 Libyan uprising.  Speeches at the event included statements made by Omar Kati, Deputy Minister for International Cooperation and Organizations Affairs, Libyan government antiquities chief Muhammad Faraj al-Falous, the envoy for Libya in the United States, representatives from the Libyan Ministry of the Interior and LARMO. Many of whom present for the celebration expressed gratitude for the efforts made by the US law enforcement and public prosecutors in bringing Libya's heritage home. 

U.S. Ambassador to Libya Richard Norland personally thanked the staff at the Manhattan DA's office and HSI- ICE.  

The spectacular ruins of the ancient Greek city of Cyrene have, for better or worse, survived Libya's 2011 revolution.  Looking at these beautiful artefacts and admiring the Met recovered piece in particular, I feel compelled to admire the learned skill that฀went into the creation of this veiled woman. For all our modern capabilities, I doubt we could turn such solid stone into the modesty of a semi transparent fold of material in quite the way that this unknown ancient Cyrene artisan did.  

Filled฀with admiration, but also a healthy does of cynicism, I understand that Libya's loses don't stop with the return of one woman behind one transparent veil to the place she was formed.  The rape of historic Cyrene for profit has and likely will continue, and there are other veiled faces of other victims still out there.  

Some of the forensic archaeologists involved in this fight were already back at work on Saturday, prepared to help law enforcement authorities in any way they can to bring Libya's sculptures back to a country that has already lost so much. 

By Lynda Albertson, ARCA CEO

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Addendum:

In July 2016 UNESCO placed all five of Libya's World Heritage sites on the UNESCO World Heritage in Danger list.  Equally concerned, and in response to a long history of threats, the United States and Libya signed its 17th cultural property agreement with Libya on 23 February 2018 to solidify the two countries' joint collaboration in combatting the looting and trafficking of cultural objects originating from the plagued North African country.  

Signed by Irwin Stephen Goldstein for the United States and by Lutfi Almughrabi, Libyan Under Secretary for Political Affairs, this agreement formalised a collaboration to protect Libya heritage for a period of five (5) years. And while this agreement was opposed by many in the antiquities trade, the restitutions discussed in this article demonstrate repeatedly that poverty, civil unrest and war create the perfect storm for the trafficking of illicit antiquities.

* Image Credit French Archaeological Mission to Libya

February 28, 2022

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Will an international rogatory finally bring Italy's treasures home from the Altes Museum?

Apulian vases Antikensammlung Berlin - Accession no. 1984.39-59

Anyone who admires the moveable heritage of Magna Graecia and Apulian red-figure artefacts in particular, and who has visited the Altes Museum located on Berlin's Museum Island will likely have come across "their" phenomenal set of grave artefacts dating back to the 4th century BCE.  Extremely carefully executed and very elegant, the grouping are housed together in one extremely large glass showcase.  The so-called Phrixos crater, a volute crater with mask handles and the Rhesos crater, a high volute crater with three-wheel handles has been attributed to the Darius painter.  The Persephone crater, a volute crater with spiral handles, the Gigantomachie crater, a volute crater with mask handles and the Priamiden-Krater are ascribed to the painter of the Underworld.  Two other volute craters with mask handles are attributed to the Loebbecke painter and the painter from Copenhagen,

What makes this group spectacularly surprising is not that these strikingly beautiful artefacts are believed to possibly represent a single burial grouping, used to furnish a rich chamber tomb north of Taranto, Italy, but rather, that at the time of their purchase, no one seemed even a smidge concerned about the improbability of their purported provenance. Or, that years later, they continue to be displayed in Germany, and not in Italy, despite longstanding proof, now two decades old, that demonstrate their likely illicit origins. 

In the late 1980s, taking Christoph Leon, an Austrian archaeologist-turned-dealer living in Basel at his word, the director of the Berlin archaeological museum (at the time located in West Germany), Wolf Dieter Heilmayer, purchased the grouping of artefacts while completely ignoring the red flags in Leon's implausible story.  Despite having no proof whatsoever, beyond the word of the restorer, Fiorella Cottier-Angeli, who relayed that she had put the vases back together and they had been found in fragments in very old chests belonging to a Swiss family named Cramer, and had reached Geneva "in the nineteenth century," Heilmayer quickly shelled out 3 million marks without demanding any substantiating proof that the artefacts he was purchasing had, in fact, left Italy and entered into Swiss territory before Italy's law n.364 of 1909, entered into force.

Likewise, neither Wolf Dieter Heilmayer, nor Luca Giuliani, curator of the German archaeological museum at the time, seemed interested in questioning the flimsy backstory of how such a large grouping of funerary artefacts could have ended up smashed into bits and stashed into said trunks.  

Did the purported Cramer family have all their ancient treasures lined up on one overloaded shelf that at some point in history came crashing down?  And did said nineteenth century family conveniently have the foresight to stow each and every swept up fragment into trunks in the hopes that years later,  someone like Ms. Cottier-Angeli might put them all back together again like some precious group of Apulian Humpty Dumpties? 

Flash forward to September 13, 1995 when alarm bells really sounded.  

On that date, Swiss authorities notified Giacomo Medici that they would execute a search warrant at his storage facilities/office of Editions Services located on the fourth floor of the Ports Francs & Entrepôts de Genève, specifically Corridor 17, Room 23.  There, a search party consisting of a Swiss magistrate, three Swiss police, headed by an inspector, three Carabinieri TPC officers, an official photographer, and the deputy director of the Ports Francs & Entrepôts de Genève seized and documented contradictory evidence to the provenance story provided for the Berlin tomb-group artefacts.  

Carefully recorded by Medici were three sets of Polaroid images, depicting four of the artefacts purchased earlier by Heilmayer for the German museum's collection:

one grouping of fifteen photographs,

one grouping of six photographs,

and one grouping of two photographs.


The preponderance of this evidence seems to contradict the fabricated provenance given to the museum, which made no mention of the antiquities dealer who at that point found himself embroiled in a complex investigation by the Swiss and Italian authorities. 


Jumping forward to the last two years.  


On 11 October 2021, Alessandro Arturi, the judge of the preliminary investigations at the Court of Rome, ordered the confiscation of all 21 of the Berlin museum's tomb-group artefacts sold by Leon.  In his ruling Arturi, cited Jacques Chamay, at the time director of the archaeological museum in Geneva (who displayed the vases at the time of they were offered for purchase), and Fiorella Cottier Angeli's well known and fully established complicity with the by now-convicted antiquities dealer Giacomo Medici.  And in describing the photographic evidence in the seized Medici archive, the judge spelt out clearly that the Polaroids in the archive depict four of the craters in the Berlin museum "first in the condition of mere fragments soaked in earth, then in the subsequent phases of restoration, up to their current integral recomposition." 

Which leads me to the next question...

Dr. David Gill has been writing about his concerns regarding these vases for years, see articles here and here. The Italian authorities have thoroughly researched their problematic provenance and have documented evidence suggesting they were extracted illegally from Italian soil and exported without the benefit of an export license to Switzerland. All of which begs the question of why, a quarter of a century later, Italy has needed to resort to a court ruling, to put pressure on Germany to get on board and consider relinquishing the Apulian funeral pieces. 

What is known is that the Italian Ministry of Justice, perhaps having lost patience, has launched an international rogatory, to which Germany has yet to formally reply. 


December 7, 2021

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Remembering the 30th Anniversary of the shelling of Dubrovnik

 SENSE Center for Transitional Justice marks one of the most notorious episodes of the intentional destruction of historic monuments of the post-WW2 era

By Helen Walasek

(c) estate of Pavo Urban

December 6 marks the 30th anniversary of the shelling of the Old City of Dubrovnik, a UNESCO World Heritage site, in 1991 during the Wars of Yugoslav Succession – one of the most notorious episodes of the intentional destruction of historic monuments in Europe since World War Two. SENSE Center for Transitional Justice in Pula has been running a five-day online campaign to mark the anniversary as part of its continuing programme to remember both the victims and the destruction of the wars. All the films and exhibitions in the campaign can be seen via the SENSE website, as can its seminal website Targeting History and Memory on the destruction of cultural property during the Yugoslav wars and how they featured in the prosecutions of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY).


During the campaign, running between 4–8 December (but all available online after that), SENSE will broadcast five short films on its YouTube channel, presenting the most important and relevant points from the ICTY trials of Slobodan Milošević, Pavle Strugar and Miodrag Jokić, all indicted for the destruction of cultural and historical heritage in Dubrovnik in 1991. The first explores the reasoning behind the ICTY's prosecutions (or lack of prosecutions) relating to the destruction of the Old Bridge (Stari Most) in Mostar and the National Library in Sarajevo in Bosnia-Herzegovina. 

The campaign includes two online exhibitions. The first shows the last photographs made by the young Dubrovnik photographer Pavo Urban, who was killed during the shelling of 6 December 1991 while documenting the heaviest artillery attack on the Old City. The other, Dubrovnik, the Day After, shows the damage caused by the shelling which were introduced as prosecution evidence at the ICTY trials dealing with the crimes against the unmilitarised UNESCO World Heritage site.

Around twenty civil society organizations from Serbia, Montenegro, Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina are participating in the campaign and will be transmitting the content prepared by SENSE on their websites and social media networks.

October 28, 2021

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After 130 years, what (limited) cultural property is finally going home to Benin


Sometimes when a country fights for their cultural property it is not about the monetary value, but about its cultural significance. 

Below is a list of the twenty-six objects, referred to as the Béhanzin Treasury, once considered colonial spoils of war, which were taken during the second Franco-Dahomean war, and which are now after legislative action in France, finally going home to Benin.  

These objects will be transferred to the Ouidah Museum of History in Ouidah, Benin, before eventually going to their permanent home at the former location of the royal palaces of Abomey, a UNESCO world heritage site where Benin is building a museum. 

These objects illustrate that not everything worth fighting for has million-dollar pricetags at art auctions and galleries, and that what is of key importance is the very important historical, symbolic and protective value this material culture represents to the Beninese population. 

1. Inventory number of the Quai Branly-Jacques Chirac museum: 71.1893.45.1 - An anthropomorphic statue of King Ghézo;

2. Inventory number of the Quai Branly-Jacques Chirac museum: 71.1893.45.2 - An anthropomorphic statue of King Glèlè;

3. Inventory number of the Quai Branly-Jacques Chirac museum: 71.1893.45.3 - An anthropomorphic statue of King Béhanzin;

4. Inventory number of the Quai Branly-Jacques Chirac museum: 71.1893.45.4 - A door from the royal palace of Abomey;

5. Inventory number of the Quai Branly-Jacques Chirac museum: 71.1893.45.5 - A door of the royal palace of Abomey;

6. Inventory number of the Quai Branly-Jacques Chirac museum: 71.1893.45.6 - A door of the royal palace of Abomey;

7. Inventory number of the Quai Branly-Jacques Chirac museum: 71.1893.45.7 - A door of the royal palace of Abomey;

8. Inventory number of the Quai Branly-Jacques Chirac museum: 71.1893.45.8 - A royal seat;

9. Inventory number of the Quai Branly-Jacques Chirac museum: 71.1895.16.1 - A recade (badge of authority) reserved for male soldiers of the blu battalion, composed only of foreigners;

10. Inventory number of the Quai Branly-Jacques Chirac museum: 71.1895.16.2 - Royal calabashes scraped and engraved from Abomey, taken at war in the royal palaces;

11. Inventory number of the Quai Branly-Jacques Chirac museum: 71.1895.16.3 - A portable altar aseñ hotagati;

12. Inventory number of the Quai Branly-Jacques Chirac museum: 71.1895.16.4 - An Aseñ royal ante mortem portable altar of King Béhanzin;

13. Inventory number of the Quai Branly-Jacques Chirac museum: 71.1895.16.5 - An Aseñ portable altar of the incomplete royal palace;

14. Inventory number of the Quai Branly-Jacques Chirac museum: 71.1895.16.6 - An Aseñ portable altar of the incomplete royal palace;

15. Inventory number of the Quai Branly-Jacques Chirac museum: 71.1895.16.7 - The throne of King Glèlè;

16. Inventory number of the Quai Branly-Jacques Chirac museum: 71.1895.16.8 - The throne of King Ghézo (long called “Throne of King Béhanzin”);

17. Inventory number of the Quai Branly-Jacques Chirac museum: 71.1895.16.9 - An Aseñ hotagati portable altar to the panther, ancestor of the royal families of Porto-Novo, Allada and Abomey;

18. Inventory number of the Quai Branly-Jacques Chirac museum: 71.1895.16.10 - Fuseau;

19. Inventory number of the Quai Branly-Jacques Chirac museum: 71.1895.16.11 - A loom;

20. Inventory number of the Quai Branly-Jacques Chirac museum: 71.1895.16.12 - A pair of soldier's pants;

21. Inventory number of the Quai Branly-Jacques Chirac museum: 71.1895.16.13 - A Katakle tripod seat on which the king rested his feet;

22. Inventory number of the Quai Branly-Jacques Chirac museum: 71.1895.16.14 - A man's tunic;

23. Inventory number of the musée du quai Branly-Jacques Chirac: 71.1895.16.15 - A Recade (badge of authority) reserved for male soldiers of the blu battalion, composed only of foreigners;

24. Inventory number of the Quai Branly-Jacques Chirac museum: 71.1895.16.16 - A Recade reserved for male soldiers of the blu battalion, composed only of foreigners;

25. Inventory number of the Quai Branly-Jacques Chirac museum: 71.1895.16.17 - An Aseñ portable altar of the incomplete royal palace;

26. Inventory number of the Quai Branly-Jacques Chirac museum: 71.1895.16.18 - A leather bag.

130 years for a pair of pants and a tunic, or a wooden thrown.  Let that sink in for a moment when you try to "value" an object in the future. 

October 14, 2021

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Caveat Venditor takeaways during the guilty pleas of New York ancient art dealers


New York-based ancient art dealer Mehrdad Sadigh, AKA Michael Sadigh, who had operated Sadigh Gallery out of the Jewelry Building (Buchman and Fox: 1910) on 5th avenue for decades before his August 2021 arrest, has appeared in the New York State Supreme Court in Manhattan this week and entered his guilty plea.

At the time of his arrest, on August 6th,  Sadigh's warrant listed a host of alleged crimes including:

  • Scheme to Defraud in the First Degree, Penal Law §190.65 (1)(b),
  • Two counts of Grand Larceny in the Third Degree, Penal Law §155.35(1)
  • Two counts of Criminal Possession of a Forged Instrument in the Second Degree, Penal Law §170.25
  • Two counts of Forgery in the Second Degree, Penal Law §170.10(1)
  • Two counts of Criminal Simulation, Penal Law §170.45(2) and Conspiracy to commit the same crimes as defined under Penal Law 105.05(1)
Details regarding why these charges were brought can be viewed in our earlier article here.

Just over two months later, on 12 October 2021, the controversial dealer admitted defeat, making no further protestations about the legitimacy of his business transactions.  In what may have been the fasted cultural property crime judicial cycle in New York history,  Sadigh plead guilty Tuesday to seven felony counts including Grand Larceny in the Third Degree and Forgery in the Second Degree. 

Interestingly, the dealer also gave damning statements showing just how easily he manipulated the underinformed buying public, duping them into purchase modern reproductions he stoically insisted were ancient.  “Driven by financial greed” Sadigh admitted, “over the course of three decades I have sold thousands of fraudulent antiquities to countless unsuspecting collectors.” 

Sadigh also admitted to manipulating his gallery's satisfaction ratings on ratings platforms, by having contacts post false positive reviews as well as hiring a specialised reputational defence firm to manipulate Google's ratings so that negative comments from bilked clients complaining about their purchases or that Sadigh Gallery was a font of fakery were harder for the average Joe to find. 

In our previous article, we posited the assembly-line nature of Sadigh's fakes, which he admitted to in his court hearing.  The dealer openly admitted that he aged modern reproductions to make them appear plausibly authentic, by adding layers of paint, grime, and chemicals to their surfaces. 

Having been caught red-handed and having admitted to crimes that stretched for decades, the Manhattan District Attorney's office, through their Antiquities Trafficking Unit, filed what some might see as a relatively lenient sentencing memorandum.  Citing Sadigh as a first offender, the District Attorney's Office recommended five years probation and a ban on businesses related to the antiquities or reproductions trade.  

While some of the general public are angry that the prosecutor didn't recommend jail time, given that he has likely ripped off hundreds or thousands of people, others have commented that they were happy that the dealer was selling fakes rather than plundering actual archaeological sites to fill his client's burgeoning demands. 

Here at ARCA were are more sanguine. 

In less than one month we have had two members of the antiquities trade finally, and publically, take the opaque wrappings off of the business practices which go on within the antiquities trade, showing that they are not as pristine or above board, as years of paid art market lobbying has attempted to whitewash.  This was also made clear in statements of wrongdoing made at the end of September by ancient art dealer Nancy Weiner,  at her own sentencing hearing, who on openly admitted to buying antiquities from Douglas Latchford knowing they had been looted and who told the court “these false provenances were meant to facilitate the sale of these objects by obscuring the fact of their illegal export.”

For now, these folks both look forward to life sentences of looking over their shoulders, considering just how many people they have swindled.  Caveat venditor, Mr. Sadigh and Ms. Weiner, caveat venditor. 


September 27, 2021

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Three convictions and one acquittal, the number of museum thefts Nils Menara, AKA Nils M., has been charged with.


Nils Menara, AKA Nils M., has been sentenced to 8 years in prison by the Lelystad court in the Netherlands for the theft of two artworks:

Vincent Van Gogh's 1882  painting Parish garden in Nuenen stolen from the Singer Laren Museum on 30 March 2020

Dutch Golden Age master Frans Hals' 1626 painting  Two Laughing Boys taken from the Hofje van Mevrouw van Aerden Museum in Leerdam on 26 August 2020.

Neither painting has been recovered.  

Menara was also convicted for possession of a firearm and a large amount of hard drugs and was described by the court as an "incorrigible, calculating criminal".  In making their case, prosecutors had noted Menara's DNA presence at both crime scenes, and one the basis that the modus operandi from both thefts, as well as others in the past. 

The fact that Menara was tripped up by his own DNA is either ironic or just plain stupid, given that in 2009 Dutch police tracked the thief and an accomplice through DNA traces left on a crowbar and bolt cutters, at the scene of a 2009 museum burglary at the Stadsmuseum IJsselstein in the Netherlands.  There, burglars stole six landscape paintings from the 17th and 19th centuries, including works by Jan van Goyen and Willem Roelofs.  In that case Menara was acquitted.  Despite the DNA traces, the judge cited that this evidence alone was insufficient because the tools could also have been touched elsewhere.

Perhaps emboldened by shaking the charges relating to the Stadsmuseum IJsselstein, three years later in 2012 Menara violently entered the Gouda museum using semtex explosives blasting through the museum's front door.   In less than five minutes, he made off with a gilded silver monstrance created in 1662 by Johannes Boogeart which had been on loan to the museum from the parish of St. Anthony of Padua, fleeing the scene on a motorbike.  Adding insult to injury, debris from the explosion pierced a painting by Ferdinand Bol and another work of art.

This time though, Menara's luck didn't hold.  A short while after, Dutch Police tied him to the blowing up an ATM with explosives, which helped them in obtaining a warrant to tap his phone, which gave the police the much-needed evidence which tied him directly to the Gouda Museum burglary.   

In June 2013 the investigation department of the Central Netherlands police, working on the Eiffel investigation into a series of explosions and ram raids at jewellers caught suspects Nils Menara and Erik P., on tape relating to two criminal events, one of which was a conversation about explosives and the other the 2012 Gouda museum theft.  The pair also talked about the Schiphol Airport diamond robbery in 2005, to the great frustration of the police and judicial authorities as the suspects had been previously arrested for this, but then released due to lack of evidence.

Upon his arrest for the Gouda Museum burglary, Menara was found to have heavy weapons, ammunition, money and drugs in his house. 

Thankfully, this time, his charges stick and on 5 February 2016 Menara was sentenced by the court in Utrecht to six years in prison for the robbery at the Gouda museum, two years less than the sentence requested by the Public Prosecution Service. 

In January 2017 seven more suspects were arrested in Amsterdam and Valencia, Spain with the help of a lucky break involving the Nils Menara wiretap.

Despite all this, it appears that Menara's stint in prison hasn't deterred him from a life of crime and remains mum as to who he handed the artworks over to. 

September 22, 2021

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How many bags of cocaine could a Monet buy?


Back this summer shots were fired by one of two suspects fleeing the scene of an attempted theft of Claude Monet's painting De Voorzaan en de Westerhem at the Zaans Museum in the Netherlands.   Yesterday, in an unexpected turn of events, one of the two suspects turned himself over to the Noord-Holland police.

More surprising still, this suspect, listed as Henk B in Dutch news services, appears to be Henk Bieslijn, the Dutch national who was previously sentenced on 26 July 2004 to four years in jail, along with his coconspirator Octave Durham, for their roles in an earlier museum burglary which nabbed Vincent Van Gogh's Congregation Leaving the Reformed Church in Nuenen and View of the Sea at Scheveningen. 

While both culprits were convicted and served out their prison sentences, the two Van Gogh's, stolen from the Van Gogh Museum on 7 December  2002 remained in the hands of the Italian underworld.  Both paintings were eventually recovered in 2016 in Castellammare di Stabia, in the Bay of Naples, where they had been stored by their purchaser, Raffaele Imperiale.  Imperiale is the Camorra affiliated crime boss of the international drug trafficking Amato-Pagano clan who was arrested in August in Dubai and is awaiting extradition.

Imperiale is alleged to have given up the Van Gogh paintings to the Italian authorities in exchange for a lower prison sentence.  Given Henk B's connections to organised crime, it seems reasonable to speculate that had this attempted theft of the Monet been successful, the French artist's painting too would likely have been brokered to members of the underworld. 

For now, it remains to be seen what Henk Bieslijn knows, what his motives were and if he will cooperate with the Dutch police.


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