{"id":1312,"date":"2020-05-11T16:25:38","date_gmt":"2020-05-11T20:25:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ielrblog.com\/?p=1312"},"modified":"2020-05-11T16:25:38","modified_gmt":"2020-05-11T20:25:38","slug":"international-crackdown-leads-to-the-confiscation-of-19000-artifacts-and-101-arrests","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ielrblog.com\/index.php\/2020\/05\/11\/international-crackdown-leads-to-the-confiscation-of-19000-artifacts-and-101-arrests\/","title":{"rendered":"International Crackdown Leads to the Confiscation of 19,000 Artifacts and 101 Arrests"},"content":{"rendered":"

On May 6, 2020, INTERPOL announced<\/a> that more than 19,000 artifacts and other artworks (including a Colombian gold mask, a carved Romanian lion, and thousands of ancient coins) had been recovered during two operations. These operations, Athena II and Pandora IV, included INTERPOL, Europol, and the World Customs Organization (WCO) and spanned 103 countries to focus on the dismantlement of international criminal networks of art and antiquities traffickers.<\/p>\n

In total, the joint initiatives, which ran in the fall of 2019, lead to 101 arrested suspects and 300 opened investigations. According to INTERPOL\u2019s press release<\/a>, \u201cThe criminal networks handled archaeological goods and artwork looted from war-stricken countries, as well as works stolen from museums and archaeological sites.\u201d The trafficked goods ranged from<\/a> objects unearthed in excavations, works stolen from museums, and looted paintings. Details of the Athena II and Pandora IV are only being released now due to operational reasons.<\/p>\n

Much of the stolen artwork had been looted from Colombia but thousands of other objects were seized by Argentinian, Latvian, and Afghan officials\u2014illustrating just how global and collaborative the operation was.<\/p>\n

\u201cOrganized crime has many faces,\u201d said Catherine de Bolle, the executive director of Europol, \u201cThe trafficking of cultural goods is one of them: it is not a glamorous business run by flamboyant gentlemen forgers, but by international criminal networks. You cannot look at it separately from combating trafficking in drugs and weapons: we know that the same groups are engaged, because it generates big money.\u201d<\/p>\n

Indeed, it\u2019s often the case that stolen art can change \u201cowners\u201d and generate a great deal of profit for its illegitimate owners before being recovered by law enforcement. For example, at the height of their power, the\u00a0Nazis notoriously stole<\/a>\u00a0countless art objects from victims of their persecution and auctioned them off afterwards; it\u2019s taken decades for these artworks to be returned to the descendants of their rightful owners.<\/p>\n

Similarly, the\u00a0Ghent Altarpiece<\/a>,\u00a0<\/em>perhaps the most frequently stolen and coveted artwork in world history, has been the target of no less than 13 crimes over the course of its 600-year history. This proves that when artwork is coveted, there is sometimes little that can be done to prevent theft from occurring. However, as evidenced by the success of the recent joint operation between Interpol, Europol and the WCO, sometimes all that\u2019s necessary to achieve justice is a coordinated effort.<\/p>\n

Details of the operations<\/em><\/p>\n

During the operations, law enforcement paid specific attention to the monitoring of online marketplaces and sales sites since the internet is a prominent factor of illicit trade of cultural goods.<\/p>\n

In fact, during \u201ccyber patrol week,\u201d the Italian Carabinieri led police and customs experts, Europol, INTERPOL, and WCO in the mapping of active targets in order to develop intelligence packages. This effort resulted in the seizure of 8,670 cultural objects for online sale, representing 28 percent of the total number of artifacts recovered during the international crackdown.<\/p>\n

Another highlight<\/a> occurred when police officers in Spain recovered several rare pre-Colombian objects at Madrid\u2019s Barajas airport. These artifacts included a Tumaco gold mask, gold figurines, and pieces of ancient jewelry. All of the artifacts had been illegally acquired by looting in Colombia.<\/p>\n

Nine traffickers were arrested in Spain and Colombian police carried out searches in Bogot\u00e1, resulting in the seizure of 242 more pre-Colmbian objects, the largest confiscation in the country\u2019s history.<\/p>\n

Additional highlights of the operations were listed in INTERPOL\u2019s press release:<\/p>\n