The theft and trafficking of goods belonging to the artistic and archaeological heritage is a factor that affects all the territories of the world, from the poorest as exporters to the richest mainly as importers. This activity is not a novelty of our time indeed it is a phenomenon that already belongs to the past just remember the looting of the Egyptian pyramids or the Mayan and Aztec civilizations. Today, however, unlike in the past, this criminal fact is much more worrying because its growth has assumed enormous proportions becoming a real threat to the world’s cultural heritage.
In West Africa, the most obvious example is the illegal excavations carried out in Mali by local people who sell stolen objects to art traffickers. This illegal trafficking is a source of livelihood for entire villages. If one compares the number of finds legally found by archaeologists with those found around the world in museums, galleries and private collections, one realizes that the quantitative difference is enormous.
In Western Europe, every year in Italy Etruscan tombs are plundered continuously, in Turkey from the site of Anavarza have been stolen finds of great value. In addition to archaeological sites, museums, churches, galleries and private residences are also targeted in the European countries by thieves who work mainly on commission. Britain estimates that the theft of regularly insured works of art is between $600 million and $750 million a year and $1.5 billion a year if you add all the works that are not insured.
In Central and Eastern Europe since the 1990s, the illegal activity of cultural goods in the former communist states has become a serious problem fuelled by the need for a stronger currency and greater freedom of movement of goods across borders. The most stolen works are paintings and religious artefacts, chalices, crucifixes, carved wooden objects and amphorae. In 1993, the Czech Ministry of Cultural Heritage reported an annual loss of national cultural heritage of 10%.
In Asia, illegal excavations mostly take place in Cambodia, in the last 25 years the archaeological site of Angkor Wat has been stripped in an outrageous manner. In China, 40,000 graves have been plundered and their contents taken across national borders.
In Latin America, the remains of pre-Columbian civilizations are systematically plundered; the appropriation and sale of artifacts belonging to the Aztec, Incas and Mayan civilizations has become increasingly well organized. Near the village of Zaña in northern Peru there is a place called Corbacho that extends at the foot of the mountain on an area of about fifty hectares, there are hundreds of holes made by looters so close to each other that it is impossible to walk without falling into it. (Di Nicola, Savona, 1999)
Theft and smuggling of works of art involve different categories of people, the thieves who committed the theft and the fences: merchants, collectors but also reckless buyers. Speaking of theft and recycling of works of art, one aspect to be emphasized is that of the risks involved in committing such crimes.
The dangers are undeniably low, in many countries there is a lack of specific national legislation on the subject, the borders are easy to overcome and the lack of documentation on the works, especially if not of enormous value, makes it difficult to identify and recover them. This illicit market operates through a circuit that is based on speed and organization, especially in less industrialized countries. The works to be stolen are chosen on the basis of certain criteria: little protection, small or isolated places, ease of transport. (Silvia Ciotti Galletti, 2001)
The rarest and most valuable pieces, easily recognizable, are quickly removed from the place where the theft occurred and are hidden for a long time before being sold. The subject of free ports should be introduced here. Free ports were initially created with the aim of storing goods for a short time before they are transported without having to pay taxes or duties to their final destination.
Today their use has increased, these places are also used to store valuable goods in a confidential and safe way. There is a risk that art dealers and organized crime will use free ports to store illicitly obtained stolen goods. (Unesco, 2017) A number of examples show that these ports are closely linked to the illicit trade in cultural goods.
In 1995 it was discovered that the Geneva Free Port was a repository for international traffic of looted antiquities and partly linked to the Getty Museum in Los Angeles. Following investigations carried out in Italy and involving the art dealer Giacomo Medici, the Swiss authorities were contacted.
After a search in the free port of Geneva, they discovered thousands of objects from desecrated tombs, especially in Italy, and the documentation of previous transactions, many of which involved the most important museums in the world. (M. Laird, 2012) Evidence of this fact is the sale of the Euphronius crater sold after the looting of an Etruscan tomb by Giacomo Medici to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and returned to Italy in 2008. (G. Baldi, 2019)
In 2003, 200 ancient Egyptian treasures were discovered in Switzerland, including two mummies. (K. Patterson, 2016) In 2010, after a check, the customs officers found a Roman sarcophagus from the second century AD in white marble decorated with bas-reliefs depicting the twelve labours of Hercules; only three similar sculptures were known to the world until then. Thanks to the material and the style it was possible to identify the place of origin, the necropolis of Perge and in 2016 it was ordered to be returned to Turkey. (Unesco, 2017)
In 2014, Italian investigators found 45 crates containing Roman and Etruscan antiques in the free port of Geneva, including two rare sarcophagi. The boxes had been deposited 15 years earlier by Robin Symes, an English art dealer, and were the systematic and illegal result of years of looting of archaeological sites in Italy. (C. Milmo, 2016) In 2016, Swiss magistrates confiscated finds from Palmyra, Yemen and Libya. (R. Galullo, A. Mincuzzi, 2017)
The first free ports were set up to store agricultural products and have been operational in Switzerland since 1849. The TEFAF Art Market 2017 report estimates that 1.2 million works of art are stored in the Geneva free port alone. According to UNESCO, there are currently seven free ports for art and it is claimed that most of the works stored come from theft, looting and illegal excavations all over the world and are then sold on the black market. (UNESCO, 2017) The black market in artistic and cultural goods is supported by various categories of people, ranging from simple looters to independent professional thieves and organized crime.
