I. Introduction

This blog report outlines the legal proceedings and final judgment in the case of Qatar Investment and Projects Development Holding Company & Anor v. Phoenix Ancient Art SA & Ors, culminating in a decision by the England and Wales High Court (King's Bench Division) in April 2025. The case centers on allegations of fraud and misrepresentation concerning the sale of antiquities to Sheikh Hamad Bin Abdullah Al-Thani by Phoenix Ancient Art, based in New York and Geneva.

II. Background

Between 2013 and 2014 Sheikh Hamad Bin Abdullah Al-Thani, through Qatar Investment and Projects Development Holding Company (QIPCO), acquired several antiquities from Phoenix Ancient Art, including:

• A chalcedony statuette of Nike, purchased for $2.2 million.

• A marble head of Alexander the Great as Herakles, purchased for $3 million.

al Thani raised concerns in early 2018 about the authenticity of the Nike statue after receiving a report claiming that microscopic inspection detected modern machine tool markings and machine polishing inconsistent with ancient craftsmanship.

III. Legal Proceedings

• Initial Claims and Limitations: In his initial complaint filed on 22 October 2020 with the high court of London, Sheikh Hamad Bin Abdulla al Thani, represented by the lawyers Pinsent Masons, accused Phoenix Ancient Art of breach of contract and/or negligent misrepresentation on the part of the gallery as the vendor of the $2.2 million Byzantine statuette of Nike whose authenticity is disputed.  Roland Ansermet was also named in the 22 October 2020 UK lawsuit.  In their response, the defendants contested the claims, arguing also that they were time-barred under the Limitation Act 1980. The High Court initially sided with the defendants 27 July 2021 ruling that despite issues related to the Covid 19 pandemic,  the complainant had failed to serve his complaint on Phoenix Ancient Art within the reasonable time limit.  In April 2022 the UK Court of Appeal upheld this decision, emphasising procedural adherence over pandemic-related delays.

• New Action and Allegations: On 8 September 2023, Sheikh Hamad Bin Abdulla al Thani and QIPCO file a new claim, asserting fraud, fraudulent misrepresentation, and unlawful means conspiracy. The court permitted these claims to proceed, determining they were not clearly time-barred and did not constitute an abuse of process.

• Summary Judgment: On 4 June 2024, the High Court granted summary judgment in favour of QIPCO, citing Phoenix Ancient Art's failure to disclose critical documents and evidence supporting allegations of fraud and misrepresentation.

IV. Final Judgment and Remedies

On 11 April 2025, the High Court ruled in favour of Sheikh Hamad Bin Abdullah Al-Thani, issuing a summary judgment pursuant to CPR 24.3 against Phoenix Ancient Art, Ali and Hicham Aboutaam, and the retired Swiss antiques dealer, Roland Ansermet concluding that Phoenix Ancient Art had engaged in fraud, dishonesty and fraudulent misrepresentation in relation to al Thani's claim. The court imposed a worldwide asset freeze of $10 million against Phoenix Ancient Art to secure potential damages and costs.

V. Implications

This case underscores the importance of due diligence and transparency in the art and antiquities market.  It highlights the legal responsibilities of dealers to provide accurate provenance information and the potential consequences of misrepresentation. The judgment serves as a precedent for future disputes involving the authenticity of cultural property.

References

• Qatar Investment and Projects Development Holding Co & Anor v. Phoenix Ancient Art SA & Ors [2024] EWHC 1331 (KB)

• Qatar Investment and Project Development Holding Company & Anor v. Phoenix Ancient Art SA [2022] EWCA Civ 422

• "Qatari royal wins court ruling over provenance of £4m antiquities," The Times, April 2025.

"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."

Object Title:  Head of Drusus Minor (13 B.C. – A.D. 23)Measurements:  H. 35 cmCreation Date:  probably after A.D. 23 and likely before A.D. 37Credit Line:  Leonard C. Hanna, Jr. FundMuseum Name:  The Cleveland Museum of ArtCulture:  RomanCountry of Origin:  AlgeriaObject Type:  SculpturesMaterials / Techniques: MarbleProvenance Information: Fernand Sintes before 1960; sold at auction at Hôtel Drouot-Richelieu Paris on September 29, 2004, lot. no. 340, unknown purchaser; Phoenix Ancient Art, S.A.(2004); sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art by Phoenix Ancient Art in 2012.Exhibition Information:  No DataPublication Information:  Piasa, Paris, Hôtel Drouot-Richelieu, Archéologie, 28–29 Septembre (Paris 2004) 74, lot. no. 340. Phoenix Ancient Art, Imago, Four Centuries of Roman Portraiture, (New York 2007) cover, III.

Section of the AAMD Guidelines relied upon for the exception to 1970: 

Cumulative facts and circumstances - Explain why the object fits the exception set forth above: The Cleveland Museum of Art has provenance information for this work back to the 1960’s, but has been unable to obtain documentary confirmation of portions of the provenance as described below. The work was sold at public auction in 2004 when it first appeared on the art market. The work was initially identified and published as Tiberius, but was later (after 2007) recognized as a likeness of his son, Drusus Minor. A certificate of origin was issued dated the day after the auction by Jean-Philippe Mariaud de Serres (deceased 2007), who assisted the prior owner and consigner, Fernand Sintes. The certificate stated the sculpture came from the collection of Mr. and Mrs. Sintes of Marseilles; that the sculpture had been in Mr. Sintes’s family for many generations; that the family’s name was Bacri; and that they had lived in Algeria since 1860. The museum contacted Mrs. Sintes who confirmed on behalf of herself and Mr. Sintes that Mr. Sintes’ grandfather, Mr. Bacri, had owned the sculpture; that Mr. Sintes inherited the sculpture from his grandfather; that Mr. Sintes brought it from Algeria to Marseilles in 1960; that he had inherited it from his grandfather prior to bringing it to Marseilles; that the sculpture was sold at the Hôtel Drouot in 2004; and that they had worked with Mr. de Serres. The portrait, monumental in scale and of great historical importance, belongs to a major category of Roman imperial portraiture not otherwise represented in the collections of the Cleveland Museum of Art.

The Cleveland Museum of Art acquired the ancient Roman portrait of the son of Emperor Tiberius 8 years later, from Phoenix Ancient Art, an antiquities dealer with galleries in Geneva and New York, whose has been discussed with recurring frequency on the Association's blog.

An image of the Drusus Minor bust graces the cover of the 2007 edition of the Phoenix Ancient Art catalog Imago, dedicated to four hundred years of Roman portraiture.  This cover photo can be seen in the screenshot taken from the dealer's eTiquities website below. 

It is unclear if the bust remained in the Aboutaam brothers' inventory from its 2004 purchase until its eventual purchase by the museum in 2012.

The museum's 2012 purchase was made possible from a credit line tapping the Leonard C. Hanna, Jr. Fund.  Iron, coal, and shipping magnate Leonard C. Hanna Jr. was an avid art collector, theatergoer, and patron of the arts. At his death, Hanna left a bequest of $34 million USD to the Cleveland Museum of Art making it the best-endowed art museum in the United States.  Income from the Hanna endowment fund is restricted to the purchase of art.

Sessa Aurunca, Remains of the theatre (scavi 1925–1926) Image Credit: Soprintendenza Archeologia della Campania

Image Credit Top Left and Bottom, Soprintendenza Archeologia della Campania, 1926 Image Credit Top Right: ARCA

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 artefact, measuring 13.7 centimeters in diameter, was discovered by a local metal detectorist in the municipality of Peraleda de la Mata, in Cáceres, Spain in 2007.  The individual who unearthed the piece initially reported the find to the regional government of Extremadura and even took a photograph of it still freshly covered in dirt.  However, soon after, the individual withdrew the medallion from the market, refused to cooperate with authorities, and its whereabouts became unknown.

What followed was a series of events that eventually resulted in the Spanish Civil Guard’s Central Operational Unit (UCO), U.S. Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) and the New York District Attorney's Office to formally lead to the object's recovery. 

Sometime after its disappearance, according to the New York District Attorney's Office, the medallion surfaced in the possession of the Barcelona-based antiquities dealer Félix Cervera Bea of Galería F. Cervera.   After that, it was smuggled out of Spain and purchased by Geneva's based Phoenix Ancient Art, where it was circulated publicly to international buyers. 

By 2010, the object was published, in a cleaned and restored state, in a Phoenix Ancient Art catalogue which listed the object with the following provenance: 

Ex Spanish Private Collection, collected ca. 1960, 

While vague provenance omitting a Barcelona dealer is not unusual in the art world, the date given for the purported Spanish collection ownership is completely incongruent to the one recorded with the authorities in the Spanish municipality.  Who, or what, if anything, was provided to Hicham and Ali Aboutaam to seemingly justify this false collection pedigree has not been publicly disclosed. 

By at least 2021,  the medallion had also been published to the Phoenix Ancient Art's website, where the dealers in question advertised an asking price of $210,000.   

The provenance on the webpage again did not match the discovery date of this piece in Spain, and instead stated:

The publication of this article came to the attention of the Dirección General de Bibliotecas, Archivos y Patrimonio Cultural of Extremadura who in turn alerted the Spanish Civil Guard’s UCO, a specialised division within the Guardia Civil responsible for the investigation and prosecution of the most serious forms of crime and organised crime.  The GC then reached out to US law enforcement.

When questioned as part of this case, Phoenix Ancient Art provided an invoice linking the silver medallion to the Catalan dealer, however, Spanish officials noted that no export permit had ever been requested or obtained for the object then being offered for purchase through the New York gallery.  Under Spanish law, artefacts removed from the country without a valid permit automatically become the property of the Spanish State. 

As a result of the following international investigation, involving the Spanish government, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), U.S. Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), the New York District Attorney's Office - Manhattan's Antiquities Trafficking Unit, and the Guardia Civil UCO Historical Heritage section, the owners of Phoenix Ancient Art agreed to voluntarily relinquish the artefact, indicating in doing so that they had purchased it as part of an "old collection of Spanish art."

On March 21, 2025, after 18 years, U.S. authorities officially handed over the long lost medallion to their Spanish counterparts, in a ceremony in New York.  On hand were Captain Juan José Águila, head of the Historical Heritage section of the UCO, Colonel Matthew Bogdanos, head of the Antiquities Trafficking Unit of the New York District Attorney’s Office, and Marta de Blas, Consul General of Spain in New York.

The successful repatriation of the Visigothic medallion marks another milestone in the ongoing efforts by Spanish and international authorities to combat the illicit trade of cultural artefacts and to return stolen heritage to its rightful place.  The case also serves as an example of just how long it takes for smuggled artefacts to be identified and that information relayed onward to the right authorities who can work towards restitution.  It also shows how an object's true origins can be obscured by vague provenance statements which give no hints to unweary buyers that the piece they are considering purchasing, may have left its country of origin in contravention of the national law. 

When looted artefacts like this one do resurface—whether in a gallery, auction house, or academic publication—identifying them requires the expertise of scholars, investigators, and cultural heritage officials.  Their recovery is therefore rarely straightforward, and often demands a coordinated effort between law enforcement agencies, government authorities, and vigilant researchers across multiple countries who are often the first to spot an illicitly exported piece in circulation. 

This case also underscores the immense challenge it takes to monitoring countless sales catalogues, websites, and scholarly publications in the search for artefacts that have been illegally removed, especially when their collection history has been falsified along the way. 

NB:  This article has been updated on 25 March 2025 with facts released in the official New York District Attorney's Office - Manhattan press release on this restitution. 

As mentioned in our blog post yesterday, on 11 April 2025, the UK's High Court ruled in favour of Sheikh Hamad Bin Abdullah Al-Thani against Phoenix Ancient Art, Ali and Hicham Aboutaam and the conveniently retired Swiss antiquities dealer Roland Ansermet, concluding that the New York and Swiss based gallery had engaged in fraud, dishonesty and fraudulent misrepresentation in relation to the Qatari royal's claim. But just who is Roland C. Ansermet, AKA Charles Roland Ansermet? And why is his role important when exploring artefact sales transactions, especially those which have involved the Aboutaam brothers and their well known antiquities dealership?

As early as 2002, an acquisition record for a 3000-2800 BCE Cycladic kandila at the Michael C. Carlos Museum traces the piece to Ansermet's Neuchâtel-based art collection.  This Greek marble storage jar was purchased by the MCCM via Christoph F. Leon, another extremely problematic Swiss-based antiquities dealer who sold (among other suspect pieces) the looted golden Greek funerary wreath to the J. Paul Getty Museum in 1993 for $1.1 million and who brokered the sale of  twenty-one pieces of looted Apulian pottery stolen from a single grave that has recently been restituted to Italy from the Altes Museum in Berlin.

Left: Photo from the Gianfranco Becchina archive  Right: Accession Photo of the Pithos in the Michael C. Carlos Museum

A year later, in 2003, the same museum documents Ansermet's connection to the Aboutaam family.  That year, Jasper Gaunt, then curator of Greek and Roman art at the Michael C. Carlos Museum, corresponded directly with Ansermet in advance of the Georgia museum's purchase of a Greek Archaic period Pithos.  The museum had been offered the artefact for purchase consideration by the Aboutaams via Phoenix Ancient Art.

Ansermet informed Gaunt that the pithos was formerly in the collection of his uncle, Professor Adolphe Goumaz of Lausanne, Switzerland, from 1960 before passing to him prior to its later circulation via the Aboutaams.  The piece was ultimately acquired by the Michael C. Carlos Museum in 2004, and assigned accession no: 2004.2.1.  A photograph of this artefact however, also appears in the business records of problematic antiquities dealer Gianfranco Becchina, a name not mentioned in the collection history presented by Ansermet or the Aboutaams, who omit (or didn't know) that the antiquity had been in circulation to or from the Sicilian owner of Palladion Antike Kunst.   

While the Michael C. Carlos Museum ultimately didn't move to restitute the Pithos from its collection based on the lone Becchina photograph, the object demonstrates a decades-long business relationship between Ansermet and the Aboutaams. 

One year later, in 2005, an Oil Lamp with Ansermet and Phoenix Ancient Art provenance was acquired by the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.  It was given accession number 2005.351.A-.C, 

Another suspect artefact traceable to Ansermet, a 3rd century CE Roman marble portrait head of the Emperor Gallienus, was consigned and ultimately sold during Christie's London Antiquities auction 1561 held on 1 October 2014.   Who the consigner was, or who the unfortunate purchaser is, has not been established through open source research.

During the Operation Achei, conducted on the orders of the investigating judge of Crotone and carried out by the Carabinieri of the Cultural Heritage Protection Command investigating an international network of antiquities traffickers, a wire tap recorded a conversation which took place on 19 February 2018, between illicit antiquities middleman Alfiero Angelucci (who will be charged later in Italy) and Roland Ansermet, who Italian investigators defined as a “character resident in Switzerland, involved in various cases related to the international trafficking of archaeological finds”.   The pair's telephone call discusses legal problems related to an ongoing Swiss investigation and recorded Ansermet boldly relaying to Angelucci: “But you don’t know what I have, the largest Etruscan collection in the world.  I showed it to them. It’s sitting in England waiting for the client and I already have the client. This one is Russian and they’ve gone crazy”.

Fast forward to two days before Sheikh Hamad Bin Abdulla al Thani accused Phoenix Ancient Art of breach of contract and negligent misrepresentation in London and Ansermet's name can again be linked to the Aboutaams, in the Beierwaltes; Aboutaam v. L’Office fédérale de la culture de la Confederation Suisse legal proceedings, which was argued on 20 October 2020, in relation to the then ongoing Swiss investigation into Ali Aboutaam's suspect business dealings. 

Ansermet's activities in conjunction with Ali Aboutaam are also detailed in records filed with the Police Court in Geneva dating to 20 July 2022 in relation to Swiss Indictment P/2949/2017 wherein Swiss prosecutors laid out that:

for the purpose of providing cultural goods, within the meaning of article 2 of the law on the transfer of cultural goods (LTBC), with a pedigree aimed at dispelling suspicions of illicit provenance and/or at facilitating their customs transfer with a view to their sale on the art market through Phoenix Ancient Art SA, Tanis Antiquities Ltd and Inanna Art Services SA, i.e. companies controlled by Ali ABOU TAAM,

Ali Aboutaam marketed a series of objects including: 

In relation to these objects, Ansermet's name singularly, or Ansermet, alongside other named individuals, appears and the Swiss prosecutors contended the paperwork accompanying these pieces contained false histories or false invoices.  In January 2023, in this case, Ali Aboutaam was given an 18-month suspended jail sentence and ordered to pay roughly $490,000 (CHF450,000) in legal costs. 

In relation to the Al Thani case, Ansermet, gave evidence that he bought the suspect Byzantine chalcedony statuette of Nike, whose authenticity is disputed, in 1982 and sold it to Phoenix's agent, Tanis Antiquities Ltd.  The Aboutaams in turn sold it to the Qatari collector for $2.2 million.

In light of the substantial number of antiquities purportedly held by the aforementioned, now nearly 85 year old Swiss national, as per his wire-tapped conversation, and his documented history of transactional engagement with problematic ancient art dealers, including Fiorella Cottier-Angeli, Christoph F. Leon, Alfiero Angelucci, and the Aboutaam family—it is recommended that all accompanying documentation, including but not limited to provenance records or attestations of  ownership, be subjected to rigorous due diligence procedures.  Furthermore, any future acquisitions or transactions involving objects linked to Mr. Ansermet should be presumed potentially irregular pending comprehensive and independent verification of their lawful origin and transfer.

In closing, Caveat emptor.

By:  Lynda Albertson