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April 18, 2025

Final Judgment in Qatar Investment and Projects Development Holding Company & Anor v. Phoenix Ancient Art SA & Ors: A Legal Milestone in Art Market Accountability

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.

January 11, 2023

Not surprisingly, and despite all of his protestations earlier, Ali Aboutaam has been convicted.


In a hearing that took less than an hour at the Geneva police court, Ali Aboutaam, the owner of the Geneva gallery Phoenix Ancient Art SA has been sentenced by the Swiss authorities.  Following on a complex and multi-year criminal and procedural investigation by officers and analysts with Switzerland's customs and anti-fraud divisions, working with the Geneva Public Prosecutor's Office, the Swiss-based merchant has been found guilty of forgery of titles.  A misdemeanour under Swiss law on the transfer of cultural property, his admissions come with an 18-month suspended prison sentence, three years probation and requiring him to pay procedural costs totalling 450,000 francs or approximately €454,410.

The courts also confirmed the seizure of 42 artefacts, confiscated due to their illicit origin which will be devolved to the Federal Office of Culture.  Several dozen other antiquities will be returned to the countries of origin.

Aboutaam's conviction and sentencing comes in response to a conspiracy which proved that the art dealer, with the help of accomplices, produced false certificates of provenance in relation to ancient art objects in circulation. Aboutaam was also found guilty of having knowingly paid at least one accomplice, who sourced antiquities from illicit excavations in various countries of the Middle East.

A statement extracted from the Swiss indictment read: 
"Ali Aboutaam knew or must have assumed that they had been wrongfully acquired". 

This particular Swiss investigation dates back to 20 December 2016 when around 5:10 p.m., at around 17:10 hours, when arriving from France by car, a Swiss border patrol officer stopped a grey Land Rover vehicle, registration No. GE777994 registered to the company Phoenix Ancient Art SA, rue Verdaine 6 & 1204 Geneva at the Veyrier border checkpoint. The car had been driven by Ali Aboutaam's driver and was transporting then-Germany based antiquities dealer Roben Galel Dib as a passenger. 

The testimony of the two persons revealed that Dib was in possession of an antique oil lamp, which neither the driver, nor the purported owner of the lamp, were able to provide documentation for proving the object’s provenance to the officers’ satisfaction.  Dib told authorities he was coming to Switzerland to "meet a girl" and that he was carrying the lamp with him because he had just had an appointment on this subject in Paris to have it restored. The object was sequestered, and an inspection of the car revealed the presence of 3 receipts for the rental of two storage units at the company Flexbox Self Storage, route du Nant-d'Avril 40 in 1214 Vernier, in the name of a conservator in Chanoy. 

Both the driver and Roben Dib were released after questioning around 2:00 AM the following morning, while on or around that same time surveillance footage of the storage warehouse listed on the receipts found in the car captured Ali Aboutaam’s wife, Biljana Aboutaam, the family's chauffeur and a housekeeper participating “several movements of merchandise".  Predicated on the foregoing, Swiss Customs Administration developed a “strong suspicion” that the warehouse was being used to store illegally imported art and antiquities. 

As is publicly now known, Roben Dib is the business partner of Hamburg-based dealer of Egyptian art Serop Simonian.  Dib was arrested in Hamburg by German police on suspicion of art trafficking in August 2020 and released after only five weeks behind bars.  

Subject to a European Arrest Warrant, Dib was then rearrested in Paris, France on 22 March 2022 after traveling there to discuss charges related to dealing in illegally trafficked Egyptian antiquities with French authorities.  

Both Dib and Simonian have been tied to million dollar illicit antiquities which have made their way (illegally) into the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Louvre Abu Dhabi, and museum and private collections throughout the world on the basis of false provenance documentation, a subject which has been covered with frequency on this blog.  

In January 2016, a 3rd millennium BCE, alabaster plaque was displayed at the European art fair BRAFA after first passing through Port Franc, the free port of Geneva to Inanna Art Services, a subsidiary of Phoenix Ancient Art.  This artefact, according to a qualified Syrian archaeologist, likely came from the ancient Mesopotamian city of Mari.  This artefact was confiscated following an inspection operation, carried out by the Belgian Federal Public Service Economy (French: SPF Économie, Dutch: FOD Economie) along with a marble table in the context of a suspicion of illicit trafficking in antiquities. 


The plaque was first identified in the Aboutaam's Phoenix Ancient Art 2012 - Crystal IV catalogue, which listed the 39.5 cm 3rd millennium BCE plaque with an image of ritual worship as having a provenance of: 

"Ex Elie Bustros Collection, Beirut, 1950s-1960s"

implying that the artefact may have come from the Beirut dealer Elias (Elie) Bustros, purportedly active from at least the 1930s through by some records the 1980s.   

It should be noted that in addition to its Ottoman Empire laws an antiquities, the Syrian Republic's Antiquities Law, Decree No. 222, was enacted in 1963.  That law vested ownership of all antiquities in the State and prohibited the sale or transfer of antiquities without governmental approval. 

This is not, however, the only incidence where "Ex-Elie Bustros Collection" has been used in connection with an artefact handled by Phoenix Ancient Art.


Provenance:
Elias Bustros, Beruit 1950’s-1983;
By descent, 1983-1986?;
(Gawain McKinley, England, on behalf of Selim Dere and Sleiman Aboutaam, 1986)

Selim Dere is the owner of a New York antiquities gallery, Fortuna Fine Arts where Manhattan authorities executed a seizure warrant in June 2018. Erdal Dere (the son of Aysel Dere and Selim Dere), was indicted in the US indicted in relation to a conspiracy to defraud buyers and brokers in the antiquities market with the use of false provenance documentation. 

The Belgian identifications resulted in a separate four-year investigation overseen by the Belgian federal prosecutor's office into the activities of the Aboutaam brothers, who opened a branch of Phoenix Ancient Art in the city of Brussel's Sablon in 2017.  This branch was subject to police raids in 2019 ordered by Judge Michael Claise. 

By June 2021, a Lebanese intermediary of Phoenix Ancient Art had already been condemned by the Geneva public prosecutor for having imported archaeological objects looted in the Middle East.  This individual was identified as having travelled to Geneva four or five times a year, for four years, to deliver ancient objects to Ali Aboutaam. Arrested in Romania, he was extradited at the request of the Geneva public prosecutor's office.

That same year, in November 2021, Ali Aboutaam was handed a 1.6 million francs fine via Swiss customs, including the costs of the proceedings. The tax authorities came after the dealer in this instance for having imported 37 million francs worth of antiquities into Switzerland between 2010 and 2017 without paying the applicable VAT. 

Which brings us back to the present, the Swiss indictment, accepted by Ali Aboutaam within the framework of a simplified procedure, acknowledges the following, verbatim:

"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."

In another section of the indictment, Aboutaam agrees that the falsification  of provenance documentation was done to launder the artworks, giving them: 

"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."

The mention of Tanis is significant.  It helps conceptualise the range of years where this shell company has been linked to questionable transactions and laundered antiquities.  In 13 December 2003 Hicham Aboutaam, Ali's brother, was arrested in the United States and charged with smuggling the silver ceremonial drinking vessel known as a rhyton into the United States from Iran and falsely claiming that it came from Syria.  That 2003 government complaint identified the gallery’s affiliate office in New York as "the Bloomfield Collection" and informed that the invoice for the artefact, declaring Syria as country of origin was issued by Tanis Antiquities, Ltd.  

Tanis Antiquities, Ltd comes up again very recently in the ongoing important French investigation involving materials sold to the Louvre Abu Dhabi.  As reported by the French newspaper Liberation, French investigators discovered that Jean-François Charnier's sister, Marie-Christine Charnier, had received money from the Aboutaam family via an account opened in a Moroccan bank, paid from the offshore structure controlled by the merchants, again, Tanis Antiquities Ltd., based in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines.  

The legal representative for Tanis Antiquities Ltd is, a Canadian citizen, of Lebanese origin, resident of Geneva, Ali Aboutaam.

I will close this article by mentioning that this is not the first occasion where the Aboutaam family, or Ali personally, has had run ins with legal authorities for their involvement  in the circulation of suspect artefacts originating from varying jurisdictions regarding trafficked objects from the Middle East.  In April 2004 Ali Aboutaam was tried in absentia in an Egyptian court and pronounced guilty and sentenced in absentia to 15 years in prison in a long-running trafficking ring that had smuggled Egyptian artefacts through Switzerland to Western dealers and galleries.  That investigation resulted in the convictions of 25 defendants, including several high-ranking Egyptian police and government officials and nine foreigners. 

March 24, 2017

Repatriation: Roman sarcophagus held at Swiss Freeport finally clears last hurdle for its return to Turkey

Image taken September 23, 2015
by the Office of the Attorney General of the Canton of Geneva - Image Credit: AFP
In December 2010, Swiss Federal Customs Administration authorities, acting under new customs legislation to combat trafficking in works of art, requested access to the inventory of Phoenix Ancient Art SA., a major supplier of museum-quality antiquities, which stores ancient works of art at the Ports Francs et Entrepôts de Genève, a freeport located in a sprawling grey industrial building on the corner of a busy junction in southwest Geneva. 

For more information about freeports as a tax free haven to store art, please see a few of ARCA's earlier blog posts here, here, and here

At the time of the audit, authorities inspected the holdings of both Phoenix Ancient Art and its warehouseman and freight forwarder, Inanna Art Services.  During this inspection, Swiss authorities discovered, but didn't physically seize, a 1-2 ton, 150-180 CE Roman sarcophagus which depicted the twelve labours of the ancient Greek war deity, Hercules. According to customs information on file for the antiquity, the sarcophagus was imported into Switzerland in the name of Phoenix Ancient Art, which often used Inanna Art Services to store its goods or to transport works of art to and from other countries. 

This extraordinary ancient funerary object, likely only one of four of this significant quality documented in the ancient art world, had little in the way of detailed provenance.  For a piece of its quality to have nothing tying it to a previously known ancient art collection; no notations of its discovery or find spot, and nothing notable in the way of published scholarly examination of its style and iconography, rang alarm bells in Switzerland. 

In a recent video, with Al Jazeera news, Ali Aboutaam claimed that the ancient funerary object had been purchased by his father and had been in their family for 25 years. While under their control, he indicated that the sarcophagus had always been stored at the Geneva freeport aside from when it was shipped to the UK for conservation treatment.   Ali Aboutam added that in 2010 the object was sold to the Gandur Foundation as a donation to the Musée d’Art ed d’Histoire in Geneva and according to Phoenix Ancient Art's attorney Bastien Geiger, Sleiman Aboutaam purchased the object in the early 90s.

Phoenix Ancient Art had proposed the sarcophagus to billionaire Swiss tycoon and commodities trader, Jean-Claude Gandur in the spring of 2010 for an estimated $1 - 4 million saying that the firm was acting on behalf of a third party whom they interestingly refused to disclose.  Gandur, who made a fortune during the 1990s buying oil concessions in Africa, has long been a powerful collector of ancient art, as well as a long term patron of the Musée d’Art et d’histoire in Geneva. 

In consideration of the donation, Marc-André Haldimann, head of the archaeology department of the Musée d’Art ed d’Histoire of Geneva and the director of the museum, Jean-Yves Marin, went to the freeport and inspected the sarcophagus to carry out an appraisal for consideration.  The pair however remained highly skeptical of the lack of established information on the ancient sarcophagus, which implied possible illicit origins.  

How could such a prestigious object emerge on the ancient art market having never been talked or written about previously?   

Wouldn't the archaeologist who discovered such a masterpiece have mentioned this spectacular find in his or her field notes?  

Wouldn't a scholar of some repute have compared it in an academic article with the other known artworks by the same signatory group of sculptures or other sarcophagi depicting Hercules?

The only documentation Phoenix Ancient Art produced which attested to the fundamental question of this exceptional object's past, were independently established statements attesting that the ancient work of art was part of the Aboutaam collection from 2002 onward and a certificate from Art Loss Register attesting the object had been checked against ALR's known stolen art database registry.  Ultimately the sale to the Gandur Foundation was cancelled, in no small part because of suspicions that the object had been smuggled out of its source country. 

In March 2011, the Specialized Body for the International Transfer of Cultural Property at the Swiss Federal Office of Culture (FOC) issued a statement that they believed the sarcophagus had originated from the general area of the famous marble quarries of Dokimion in Phrygia, the present day Antalya region of Turkey. The Dokimeian white marble sarcophagus was likely sculpted sometime during the the second century, when the area was under Roman rule. 

Based on the FOC's examination, Swiss authorities alerted their counterparts in Ankara, and Turkey in turn, issued a demand for the restitution of the rare antiquarian work by a letter rogatory of July 2011. Turkey also sent a request for mutual assistance to the Geneva court and an inquiry was formally opened in Switzerland to look into alleged violations of the Cultural Property Transfer Act (LTBC).  This act requires art market professionals keep a register for 30 years, in which the "origin of the cultural property" is to be documented. 

In order for the sarcophagus to have been in good standing in Switzerland under the LTBC, the dealers would be obliged to prove that the acquired object was in an old collection outside the source country prior to 2005 or to demonstrate that the object was not stolen or exported illicitly after 2005.

In October 2013, the case made its way through Swiss court. The Geneva Chief Public Prosecution Office and the Chief Public Prosecutor of Antalya conducted a comprehensive joint study with the Swiss magistrate in charge of the case traveling to Antalya, Turkey where Turkish Public Prosecutor Osman Şanal provided access to witnesses.   

Testimonies were heard from Professor Haluk Abbasoğlu and Professor İnci Deleman who conducted excavations in the region where the sarcophagus was illegally excavated.   The Swiss prosecutor also met with an unnamed imprisoned smuggler serving time on a separate smuggling charge in Elmalı prison.  This smuggler allegedly confirmed that the artifact had been looted and smuggled out of Turkey. 

Based on the evidence gathered, on September 21, 2015 Swiss authorities ordered the repatriation of the sarcophagus. But international legal proceedings move at a snail’s pace and the return of this one object, approved by the Geneva Court of Justice on May 2, 2016, was slowed again, due to a challenge by the Swiss Federal Court. 




More on the dealers involved in this repatriation case.

Phoenix Ancient Art operates a gallery in New York city as well as in Geneva Switzerland.  Founded by Sleiman Aboutaam in 1968, the firm was incorporated in 1995.  The second-generation family business is now managed by Sleiman's sons, Hicham Aboutaam and Ali Aboutaam, who took over the firm's operation after Sleiman’s death in 1998.  The firm has been embroiled in a significant number of antiquities-related controversies. 

A sampling (not a complete listing) of other instances of concern involving this firm include:

A third-century CE South Arabian alabaster stele the brothers attempted to sell in May 2002 via Sotheby’s auction house in New York for approximately $20,000 to $30,000 in which they listed the provenance for the piece as having belonged to a private English collection. Sotheby's researchers conducting due diligence before the auction found published photographs of the stele indicating that this tablet, carved in low relief, with an image of the fertility goddess Dat-Hamin, had been stolen in July 1994 from the Aden Museum in Yemen's port city during the country's previous war.  This object was forfeited to the U.S. government in December 2003 and eventually returned to Yemen.  

Hicham Aboutaam was arrested in 2003 for smuggling a looted ceremonial drinking vessel from Iran into the US, claiming that it had come from Syria.  Hicham pled guilty to the charges in 2004, paid a fine, and the vessel was returned to the Iranian authorities.  Hicham Aboutaam stated that his conviction stemmed from a "lapse in judgment."

The Egyptian authorities have accused Ali Aboutaam of involvement with Tarek El-Suesy (al-Seweissi), who was arrested in 2003 under Egypt’s patrimony law for illegal export of antiquities. Ali Aboutaam was tried in absentia, pronounced guilty and was fined, and sentenced to 15 years in prison in the Egyptian court in April 2004.  To date, he has not served any of the Egyptian sentence. 

The Aboutaams voluntarily repatriated 251 Antiquities valued at $2.7 Million to the State of Italy in May 2009 tied to one of Italy's most notorious smuggling rings.

Advice on collecting ancient art

ARCA encourages its readers to remember that the only way to avoid looting is to pressure dealers and collectors to not participate directly or indirectly in looting through their sourcing and purchases.  Collectors of ancient art are only the most current stewards of objects with long and telling histories. The provenance, or ownership history of a piece of art is important and should detail strong proof that an object has come from a legitimately traded collection.  

Buying and trading in ancient works of art, without well documented collecting histories, simply for their beauty or for the purpose of rescuing them from countries in conflict, only encourages further looting and further laundering of smuggled illicit objects. 

ARCA strongly discourages collectors and museums from buying or accepting objects that cannot pass the 1970 test or which lack a legitimate export permit from the actual and correct country of the object's origin.

By: Lynda Albertson

April 20, 2017

Thursday, April 20, 2017 - , No comments

Repatriation: The Cleveland Museum of Art returns WWII looted bust of Drusus Minor to Italy

Sometimes the repatriation of a looted object is a long time coming. 

Tuesday, April 18, 2017 the Cleveland Museum of Art and Italy's Ministero dei Beni e delle Attività Culturali e del Turismo - MiBACT announced with great public fanfare and press releases that an agreement had finally been reached for the transfer of a marble portrait head representing Drusus Minor (Drusus Julius Caesar, 13 B.C.E.-C.E. 23) back to its country of origin.

The object was part of a group of sculptures excavated in the 1920s that had been displayed in the Civic Museum of Sessa Aurunca from 1926 until it went missing some 70+ years ago at the end of the Second World War.  It is speculated that the object was taken by military personnel, perhaps in search of war mementos.

When the museum first announced the object's acquisition in 2012 they made no mention of who the marble head was purchased from, nor what the purchase price was.  

Seeking to establish an exception to the AAMD's Guidelines on the Acquisition of Archaeological Material and Ancient Art the cached version of the now removed AAMD website object information page listed the object's details and collection history as follows:

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.

Drafted by the the Association of Art Museum Directors and adopted by the AAMD member institutions in the US, Canada and Mexico, the AAMD guidelines, set standards by which member museums should conduct due diligence when acquiring archaeological material and ancient art.  These guidelines serve to discourage member museums from purchasing antiquities unless solid collection histories prove that the object was outside its country of probable modern discovery before 1970, or was legally exported from its probable country of modern discovery after 1970.

Filling in the gaps on one repatriated object's collection history 

Through the dedicated work of multiple researchers, archaeologists, and lawyers in Italy, France, the UK, the US and Poland, we know the following:

The French auction house's website recorded that the sculpture was sold as lot. 340 to an anonymous buyer at a Hôtel Drouot auction in Paris on September 29, 2004 for €324,000. 

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
In the October-December 2014 Bollettino D’Arte, produced by Italy’s Ministero dei Beni e delle Attività Culturali e del Turismo, author Giuseppe Scarpati deduced that documentation stored in the Neapolitan archives of the Superintendence Archeologia della Campania, included previously unpublished photos which catagorically confirm that the object was originally discovered between 1925-1926 in Italy when Amedeo Maiuri was excavating the Gagliardella district of Sessa Aurunca, near the site's theater.

The black and white photos found in the Naples archives were taken in 1926. Contact find records of the documented measurements for the ancient marble head, also match records from the Cleveland museum's ancient art collection. 

Image Credit Top Left and Bottom, Soprintendenza Archeologia della Campania, 1926
Image Credit Top Right: ARCA
In a still earlier Italian article, published before the museum's purchase, by the Italian Societá Nazionale di Scienze Lettere ed Arti Napoli, Volume LXXV 2008-2011,  Scarpati had already documented the find images, as well as site diagrams by Sergio Cascella whose documentation reconstructs the zone of the the excavation find spot, the theatre at Sessa Aurunca.

With all this documentation, transfer of the object by the Cleveland Museum of Art back to Italy was clearly the only appropriate resolution.

But will the museum will be reimbursed by Phoenix Ancient Art?

At the time of this article, William Griswold, the museum's director at the Cleveland Museum of Art declined to comment on whether his museum would be reimbursed by the Aboutaams. 

And if the museum is not reimbursed? 

According to a 2014 US government, there are upwards of 35,000 museums in America.  But how many museums employ dedicated provenance researchers to conduct research, to trace an object's history of ownership, and to clarify the circumstances surrounding the potential costly acquisition of an artwork or an antiquity with illicit or looted origins?

In 2016 Cleveland Museum of Art was named the second best museum in the U.S. by Business Insider magazine, just one step behind the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. Perhaps given the diplomatically touchy nature of repatriating looted objects, which necessitates both parties drafting tedious carefully-agreed upon press releases about how wonderful one another is, museums might be wiser to invest in more personnel with solid provenance researching backgrounds to vet objects before their purchase.

In the long run, provenance researchers are cheaper than having to forfeit a pricey accessioned treasure, not to mention,  museum directors aren't subjected to those cheesy photo opportunities with cultural attachés wearing diplomatically-pasted-on grins.

Food for future purchasing thought

A statement from the ICOM International Observatory on Illicit Traffic in Cultural Goods states: 

Might be worthwhile to re-read this suggestion before signing a check for that new must-have acquisition.  Failure to engage in due diligence causes institutions like the Cleveland Museum of Art  to suffer at their own hands.

By:  Lynda Albertson


References accessed and interviews used for this article


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ARCA internal research data

Avvocatura dello Stato and the Procuratore Aggiunto dello Stato, Italy

Ministero dei Beni e delle Attività Culturali e del Turismo

Stefano Alessandrini, consultant to Ministero dei Beni e delle Attività Culturali e del Turismo and the L'Avvocatura dello Stato - Italy. 

Paul Barford, http://paul-barford.blogspot.it/search?q=drusus+cleveland&max-results=20&by-date=true

Sergio Cascella - https://www.academia.edu/2199517/Un_ritratto_di_Tiberio_da_Sessa_Aurunca_ritrovato_RAAN_LXXV_2008-2011_pp._345-368

David Gill, http://lootingmatters.blogspot.it/search?q=drusus+cleveland&max-results=20&by-date=true

Giuseppe Scarpati - https://www.academia.edu/24236780/IL_RITRATTO_DI_DRUSO_MINORE_DAL_CICLO_STATUARIO_GIULIO_CLAUDIO_DI_SESSA_AURUNCA


Rick St. Hilaire - http://culturalheritagelawyer.blogspot.it/2017/04/drusus-head-revisited.html

September 1, 2024

Phoenix Ancient Art: A Summer of Legal Entanglements and Tax Showdowns


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
This is not the first time that Phoenix Ancient Art has handled suspect South Arabian artefacts from this war-torn country in the MENA Region.  In 2002, its New York affiliate consigned a third-century CE alabaster stele depicting the fertility goddess Dat-Hamin for auction at Sotheby’s New York.  In that instance, the gallery's owners, brothers Ali and Hicham Aboutaam, had told the auction house that the piece came from a private English collection.

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 high court's judges based July's decions on various elements confirmed within the Aboutaam's case files.  First, they noted that some of the artefacts had been stored and displayed within Ali Aboutaam's private home for an average period of between the end of 2012 and 28 February 2017, the date that his home was searched pursuant to two search and seizure orders, one issued by the Geneva Prosecutor and one issued by the Federal Customs Administration of the Swiss Confederation.  That search occurred in relation to a Swiss investigation into the movements of antiquities of suspicious provenance, or chain of title, or for being imported and exported potentially in violation of Swiss law governing cultural property.  

In issuing their taxation decisions, the Swiss high court recalled "that according to art. 30 para. 1 of the Federal Ordinance of 1 November 2006 on customs (OD; RS 631.01; cf.nature. 9 al. 1 and 2 LD), goods for temporary admission into the customs territory are admitted duty-free if they are the property of a person having his registered office or domicile outside the customs territory and if they are used by such a person (let. a), if they can be identified with certainty (let. b), if the admission lasts for a maximum of two years (let. c) and if they are re-exported in the same state, the use is not deemed to be a change (let. d). The procedure for temporary admission is provided for in Articles 162 to 164 OD." 

In rejecting Aboutaams tax-related appeals, the ruling judges and the court affirmed that the Swiss-based dealer had misused the relocation procedure, which allows goods intended for resale abroad to be exempt from import tax, by instead keeping some of these items for personal use.


Dib is the business partner of Hamburg-based dealer of Egyptian art Serop Simonian who was later arrested in Hamburg by German police on suspicion of art trafficking in August 2020 and released after only five weeks behind bars.  Subject to a European Arrest Warrant, Dib was then taken into custody by French authorities on 22 March 2022.   Likewise his business partner Serop, having surrendered in Germany, was extradited to France, where he too has been indicted on 15 September 2023 on charges of fraud and organised gang money laundering as well as for criminal association. 

Fairs, Retirement, Coins, and Wine

Despite these woes, over the summer Phoenix Ancient Art participated in the UK's annual Treasure House fair from 27 June 2024 through 2 July 2024.  When interviewed, Hicham Aboutaam, says that his brother retired two years ago from Phoenix Anicent Art S.A., “to focus on the establishment of a foundation”.  Michael Hedqvist, is now listed as MD/Chief Operating Officer (directeur) of the Swiss gallery.  Ali's own website, aliaboutaam.com, now has a page which states that the Geneva dealer is "Currently developing a collection of ancient Greek and Roman coins and rare wines. Reach out if that sounds interesting to you."   

From the 13,408 likes on the Instagram post at the top of this blog post, it doesn't seem like his social followers are overly perturbed by his legal entanglements. 

By:  Lynda Albertson

March 22, 2025

Bellerophon’s Return: Spain recovers a stolen antiquity after years on the ancient art market

A Visigothic silver medallion, dating between the 5th and 7th century CE and depicting the Corinthian hero of Greek mythology Bellerophon on horseback, slaying a Chimera, has been formally returned to Spain, following an international investigation involving Spanish and U.S. authorities.

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:

Art market, prior to 1960;
Ex-Spanish private collection, collected ca. 1960

By 2022, the medallion had been featured in an academic article written by Cesáreo Pérez González and Eusebio Dohijo.  This article was published in the academic journal Oppidum, and reconfirmed that the unique Visigothic medallion was in the possession of the New York-Swiss ancient art dealers, and again noting that the artefact came from a private collection.  

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. 

April 19, 2025

Saturday, April 19, 2025 - No comments

The Ansermet Affair: Untangling a Swiss Dealer’s Role in the Global Antiquities Trade

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: 

  • a so-called "Eyes" plaque in alabaster
  • a sconce in the shape of a triton in bronze
  • a Sumerian bronze head of a bull man
  • a bronze cannanite mask representing the face of a deity
  • a statuette of Orant representing a standing dignitary

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