A collective of the world’s most eminent museums, including the Louvre Abu Dhabi and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, have purchased looted Middle Eastern artefacts to the sum of tens of millions of euros.
Five art experts based in Paris have been arrested on suspicion of masking the origins of said pieces, in order to ensure their sale. In a piece for The Times, Adam Sage said that the arrests come “amid claims that Paris is an international centre for trade in illegal artefacts.”
According to an unnamed legal source, four individuals were arrested on Monday of this week, and one on Tuesday in an investigation surrounding “the trafficking of antiquities from countries that are politically unstable or at war”. The five are currently being questioned by the Central Office for the Fight against the Trafficking of Cultural Goods, while officers from the Central Office for the Fight Against Major Financial Crime are also involved.
While the subjects are yet to be named, according to the French press, the chairman of Pierre Bergé & Associés is one of the five. The auction house declined to comment on the allegation. All of those arrested are believed to belong to the “upper reaches of the Parisian cultural establishment”.
The arrests follow the decision of the Metropolitan Museum of Art to return an Egyptian golden-sheathed coffin from the first century BC last year, when is was revealed the export licence had been forged.
Facebook has promised to withdraw any content on its platform “that attempts to buy, sell or trade in historical artefacts” as it had been criticised for turning a blind eye to such sales.
