Antiquities; Looting; Smuggling; Collecting; Collections; Italy,Edoardo Almagià,illicit antiquities
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Edoardo Almagià Wanted: Manhattan DA Seeks Arrest of Dealer in Major Antiquities Smuggling Case
Just over a year ago, ARCA published a post highlighting suspect artefacts which passed through Michael L. Ward's variously named galleries which were worth further exploration.
In that blog post, it was noted that, according to Edoardo Almagià's Italian sentencing document, the convicted Italian dealer sold Michael Ward the following artefacts:
a. A black figure kylix;b. A marble lion mask;c. A marble sculpture depicting a draped woman;d. A terracotta mask;e. A torso of Aphrodite;f. A romanesque capital;g. A cameo female bust in marble;h. A Roman marble urn;i. A python crater from Paestum + 2 bronze vases;j. A black figure olpe and marble torso;
k. 2 Attic craters, a hydria and abell crater.
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| Triade Capitolina on display at the Palazzo del Quirinale |
1992
Almagià reportedly offered to pay Casasanta a meagre $20,000 for the multi-million-dollar statue, and after a bit of drama between the pair, Casasanta declined on the offer and sold hislooted marble sculpture to the owner of Atelier Amphora, Mario Bruno, another suspect intermediary dealer operating in Lugano, who also had zero compunction about buying suspect art and selling it onward.
1996
By 1996, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York (SDNY) had seized two dozen Etruscan ceramics from the New York Upper East Side gallery of Renee and Robin Beningson which had ties to Edoardo Almagià. According to that investigation, all 24 artefacts at New York's Antiquarium Ltd., had been looted from what is now known as the Parco Archeologico di Crustumerium. This site represents an ancient city which once overlooked the Tiber between Eretum and Fidenae north of Rome.
Later evidence would determine that following the seasonal closure of an authorised excavation at Crustumerium in July 1987, Almagià had hired tombaroli—professional looters—to pick up where the departing archaeologists had left off.
The dealer is then alleged to have had the goods, extracted by the looters, smuggled out of Italy, passing first through Switzerland, before ultimately travelling overseas to New York where they came into the control of the Beningsons.
2000
Almagià’s next brush with the law came when he was stopped at John F. Kennedy (JFK) International airport in Queens, New York in 2000 with two stolen Italian frescoes from the ancient city of Vulci that he had falsely declared.
Six weeks later, one of his commercial shipments was also stopped in Newark, New Jersey. That shipment contained five stolen Italian antiquities and was again accompanied by false documentation.
By 2006, Almagià’s high life as a prestigious dealer cracked completely when, in April 2006, Special Agents with the US Department of Homeland Security, with intel assistance from officers with Italy's Carabinieri, obtained the legal authorisation to enter and photograph the contents of the dealer's New York apartment on 169 East 78th Street, as well as his rental storage space at Manhattan Mini-Storage, located at 420 E 62nd Street in New York. There, officers documented dozens of antiquities and stacks of business records which coldly outlined the extreme excesses of this dealer's trafficking operations.
Like Giacomo Medici's and Gianfranco Becchina's earlier archives, the "Almagià Archive" recovered in this law enforcement operation includes sales transaction ledgers, written in the dealer's handwriting, referred to by officers as the "Green Book" and the "Yellow Book" encompassing transactions in 1997 and 1998.
In the "Green Book" Almagià listed, in concrete details, a total of 1,698 artefacts which he had sold out of his New York apartment. To do so, he often grouped artefacts by the tombarolo from whom he had purchased the material (identifying the supplying tombarolo by his nickname or initials). Some entries listed in these ledgers designated both the price Almagià paid to his source, as well as the price he subsequently sold the artefact for. On occasion, some entries even list to whom the looted artefact was sold onward to.
For example, one entry for an "Attic red fig. Lekythos w panther" shows that Almagià bought the object for $1,000 from "Mau," whom researchers identified as the tombarolo Mauro Morani). He then asold the vessel onward to "antiq", the abbreviation for the previously mentioned New York gallery, Antiquarium, operated by Renee and Robin Beningson for $2,000.
The extant pages of the "Yellow Book" document an additional 84 stolen antiquities or groups of stolen antiquities known to have been trafficked by Almagià and/or his cousin Peter Cesare Glidewell who operates a gallery space registered in the UK and operating in Spain known as Caylus Fine Art Limited. The level of detail in both of these ledgers ultimately created a strikingly clear blue print, which, along with seized Day Planners, invoices, and lists, has given authorities a clear map to follow which has proven critical to this complex and lengthy investigation, and to tracing where each of the suspect artefacts handled by Almagià went after he cashed in.
Through the initial work on this US investigation, seven antiquities were quickly identified as having been looted from Italy. But while the review was still under way, Almagià used the intervening time to shift more suspect objects and their documentation from his apartment and storage facility into a shipping container which was then placed on a ship bound for Naples. Afterward, he fled the country.
When the ship was intercepted at the port of Naples on December 14, 2006, Italian authorities recovered 37 paintings and numerous archaeological objects as well as thousands of documents and, the now tell tale Polaroid photographs used by traffickers during this time period.
Immediately after the 2006 seizure in Naples, Italian prosecutor Paolo Giorgio Ferri brought charges against the dealer, Princeton University Art Museum’s then-curator Michael Padgett and Mauro Morani a tomb raider and caposquadra who provided Almagià with first dibs on looted antiquities, for knowingly committing crimes against the cultural heritage of Italy.
Acquittal, Seizures, and Restitutions
Unfortunately, Almagià's criminal case in Italy was dismissed in 2012due to the statute of limitations, though the Italian courts upheld the confiscation of all relics previously in his possession. IN making that ruling the presiding judge stated that his activities contributed to "one of the greatest sacks of Italian cultural heritage based on the sheer amount of stolen goods."
In connection with the U.S. side of the investigation, New York’s Antiquities Trafficking Unit has diligently worked to identify over 2,000 stolen antiquities trafficked by Almagià. To date they have recovered 221 of them, worth an estimated $6 million.
Of these, 150 objects were seized as part of the Michael Steinhardt investigation, with the New York billionaire having purchased a total of ten known and restituted items from the Italian.
Arrest Warrant
Yesterday, the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office obtained an arrest warrant for Edoardo Almagià based upon three charges:
- Conspiracy in the Fourth Degree under Penal Law § 105.10(1)
- Scheme to Defraud in the First Degree under Penal Law § 190.65(1)(b)
- Criminal Possession of Stolen Property in the Third Degree under Penal Law § 165.50
This arrest warrant, totaling 80 pages, details the grave extent of this trafficking network and ultimately the harm he caused to Italy’s cultural heritage. As New York authorities await their day in court with this trafficker, the hope remains that dealers, collectors, and museums, with outstanding pieces purchased via this dealer or their subsequent handlers, will come forward and disclose the remaining pieces which are tied to Almagià.
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