Original:  The Carabinieri stated that the warehouses contained 10,000 artifacts worth 50 billion lire (about $35 million).Andrew L. Slayman. Geneva Seizure. Archaeology. May 3, 1998, updated September 14, 1998 In 1997, Giacomo Medici was arrested; his operation is believed to be "one of the largest and most sophisticated antiquities networks in the world, responsible for illegally digging up and spiriting away thousands of top-drawer pieces and passing them on to the most elite end of the international art market."Men's Vogue, November/December 2006, Vol. 2, No. 3, pg. 46. Medici was sentenced in 2004 by a Rome court to ten years in prison and a fine of 10 million euros, "the largest penalty ever meted out for antiquities crime in Italy." In another, unrelated case in 1999, the Getty had to hand over three antiquities to Italy after determining they were stolen. The objects included a Greek red-figure kylix from the 5th century BC signed by the painter, Onesimos, and the potter, Euphronios, looted from the Etruscan site of Cerveteri; a torso of the god Mithra from the 2nd century AD; and the head of a youth by the Greek sculptor Polykleitos.Andrew L. Slayman. Getty Returns Italian Artifacts. Archaeology. Volume 52 Number 3, May/June 1999 According to the New York Times, the Getty refused for several years to return the antiquities to their rightful owners.Alessandra Stanley. Getty to Give 3 Artifacts Back to Italy. New York Times. February 4, 1999 Yet another case emerged in 2007, when Italy's art-theft investigation squad discovered a hidden cache of ancient marble carvings depicting early gladiators, the lower portion of a marble statue of a man in a toga and a piece of a column. Italian Culture Minister Francesco Rutelli used the case to underline the importance of these artifacts for Italy.Rare gladiator marbles discovered in major Italian art bust. Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. January 24, 2007 Looting of South East Asia During their occupation of Indochina, the French government removed various statues and other objects from the region. During its existence, the Khmer Empire was regularly raided by its neighbours, which resulted in its cultural heritage being distributed widely across the region.Briggs, Palmer. Ancient Khmer Empire The major historian of the Khmer Empire, Lawrence Palmer Briggs, regularly mentions these raids—for example, the sack of Angkor in 1430–31 by the Siamese who carried off their loot to Ayutthaya,Briggs, Palmer. The Ancient Khmer Empire, p258 after which "people fled from the 'great and glorious capital' of Khmer civilisation as if it were ridden with plague".Briggs, Palmer. The Ancient Khmer Empire, p261 Consequently, the cultural heritage of the region was already widely spread by the time the French founded their protectorate in IndoChina in 1864. Briggs describes Preah Khan Kompong Svay as "shamefully looted" in the late 19th century by Louis Delaporte, "who carried the spoils away to French museums (thus beginning the systematic looting of Cambodian temples for the benefit of public and private collections of Europe and America)".Briggs, Palmer. The Ancient Khmer Empire, p 222 He also describes how French tourists well into the 20th century carried off many statues.Briggs, Palmer. The Ancient Khmer Empire, p77 Therefore, by the early 20th century it was rare to find Khmer objects in situ and local and foreign collectors, particularly in France, had built up collections of Khmer objects. Many objects from the region were exported to Europe and elsewhere and ended up in museums such as the Guimet. During the second world war, whilst France was occupied by Nazi Germany, the Indochina region was controlled variously by the Japanese, locally, and after the war, the French regained control. There followed a period of 35 years of disruption and warfare, including Dien Ben Phu and the Vietnam war. Thereafter Cambodia fell under the control of the notorious Khmer Rouge regime. Some objects left the country during that period, either to save them from destruction or for looting purposes. Reports have suggested that where objects have been moved, local officials and armed forces (both before and after the periods of turmoil) were responsible.see movie Angkor for Sale directed Adrian Maben 1997 In 1992, a report in The Christian Science Monitor described art experts' concerns about a "rampant degradation of archeological sites and an accelerating trade in stolen artifacts sweeping Southeast Asia" as a consequence of war in Cambodia and instability in the region.Tefft, Sheila. "Plundering of Artifacts Sweeps Asia", The Christian Science Monitor, 15 October 1992. Retrieved 26 June 2016. Statues were being stripped from Angkor Wat and other sites by smuggling rings often working in collusion with military and political officials, including a major network in Chiang Mai run by a former government minister. The British-born Thai-based collector Douglas Latchford says that when he and other collectors traversed Cambodia and Thailand in the 1960s, buying and trading Cambodian antiquities, they were not concerned about provenance, but regarded themselves as rescuers of artefacts that otherwise might have been neglected or destroyed.Mashberg, Tom, "Claims of Looting Shadow Expert in Khmer Art", The New York Times, 12 December 2012. Many of the objects they purchased were later donated or sold to museums. In the 2000s, evidence that the artefacts had been looted persuaded a number of major museums around the world to return the objects to Cambodia."In 2012, Latchford was identified in [US] federal court records as a middleman in the trafficking of looted antiquities from Southeast Asia. Authorities allege Latchford knowingly purchased two looted Khmer sculptures from “an organized looting network” and conspired with the London auction house Spink to obtain false export permits for them. The case was a civil lawsuit, and Latchford was not charged with a crime. But after a lengthy legal battle, Sotheby’s agreed to return its sculpture to Cambodia. Soon after, the Norton Simon Museum, Christie’s auction house and the Metropolitan Museum of Art all returned sculptures tied to Latchford." Chasing Aphrodite: "The Kushan Buddhas: Nancy Wiener, Douglas Latchford and New Questions about Ancient Buddhas" (originally posted 1 February 2015) Among the objects sold or donated to major museums by Latchford are a number of rare ancient Khmer statues, reportedly looted from the temple site of Koh Ker in Cambodia, and at least two Indian seated Kushan Buddhas, looted from the ancient Indian city of Mathura. One of the seated Buddhas was originally offered—via Manhattan dealer Nancy Wiener—to Canada's Royal Ontario Museum, but they ultimately declined to buy it, owing to its dubious provenance. In 2000 it was bought by the National Gallery of Australia, but subsequent investigations exposed the seated Buddha as a looted artwork, and it has since been repatriated to India. Other US museums reported to have received looted Asian artefacts from Latchford include the Denver Museum of Art, the Kimbell Museum in Ft. Worth, Texas, and the Norton Simon Museum.Chasing Aphrodite: "The Met Returns Two Khmer Statues to Cambodia, Citing Clear Evidence Of Looting" (posted 3 May 2013) In 2013, the Met announced that it would repatriate to Cambodia two ancient Khmer statues, known as "The Kneeling Attendants", which it had acquired from Latchford (in fragments) in 1987 and 1992."Metropolitan Museum of Art to Return Two Khmer Sculptures to Cambodia", metmuseum.org A spokesperson for the Met stated that the museum had received "dispositive" evidence that the objects had been looted from Koh Ker and illegally exported to the United States.Felch, Jason, "Metropolitan Museum says it will return Cambodian statues", Los Angeles Times, 3 May 2013 In 2015, the Cleveland Museum of Art voluntarily returned to Cambodia a 10th-century sculpture of the Hindu monkey god Hanuman, after a curator from the museum uncovered evidence that it had been looted—the statue's head having appeared on the market in Bangkok in 1968 during the Vietnam War and its body having appeared on the market in 1972 during the Cambodian Civil War. The museum's director said, "Our research revealed a very real likelihood that it was removed from a site enormously important to the kingdom of Cambodia during a terrible time and its return was completely consistent with the highest legal and fiduciary standards."Litt, Steven. "Cleveland Museum of Art returns Hanuman sculpture to Cambodia, saying new evidence indicates it was probably looted", cleveland.com, 11 May 2015. Retrieved 27 June 2016. Tess Davis, an archaeologist and lawyer for the Antiquities Coalition, praised the museum's decision but said, “The Hanuman first surfaced on the market while Cambodia was in the midst of a war and facing genocide. How could anyone not know this was stolen property? The only answer is that no one wanted to know.”Tharoor, Kanishk. "Museums and looted art: the ethical dilemma of preserving world cultures", theguardian.com, 29 June 2015. Retrieved 27 June 2016. Looting of Poland Throne of Stanisław August Poniatowski displayed in the Moscow Kremlin. The throne was looted after the collapse of the November Uprising in the 1830s. In the 1920s, the Soviet government returned it to Poland, yet it was deliberately destroyed by the Germans during World War II."The last king of Poland was Stanisław August Poniatowski. His royal throne, or mainly its backrest, was decorated with eagles beautifully embroidered in gold and silver, symbolizing Poland. When the Germans seized Warsaw in World War II, the governor of German-occupied Poland ordered the eagles taken down and presented to German officers as a souvenir." The Załuski Library, the first public library in Poland, was founded by two brothers, Józef Andrzej Załuski, crown referendary and bishop of Kiev, and Andrzej Stanisław Załuski, crown chancellor and bishop of Cracow. The library was considered one of the most important libraries of the world, featuring a collection of about 400,000 printed items, manuscripts, artworks, scientific instruments, and plant and animal specimens. Located in Warsaw's Daniłowiczowski Palace, it was looted in the aftermath of the second Partition of Poland and Kościuszko Uprising in 1794 by Russian troops on orders from Russian Tsarina Catherine II; the stolen artworks were transported to St. Petersburg and became part of the Russian Imperial Library, which was founded one year later. Although some pieces were returned by the Soviet Union in 1921 and were burned during the Warsaw Uprising against German forces, other parts of the collection have still not been returned by Russia. Polish scientists have been allowed to access and study the objects.What's On. Library Anniversary. The Warsaw Voice. August 18, 1997. The Polish Crown Jewels were removed by the Prussians in 1795 after the Third Partition of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. After the collapse of the November Uprising, literary and art treasures were removed from Poland. Poland regained some of the artefacts after the Treaty of Riga, comprising the furnishings of the Warsaw Castle and the Wawel Castle. During the Second World War, Germany tried to destroy Poland completely and exterminate its population as well as culture. Countless art objects were looted, as Germany systematically carried out a plan of looting prepared even before the start of hostilities (see also Nazi plunder). Twenty-five museums and many other facilities were destroyed. The total cost of German theft and destruction of Polish art is estimated at 20 billion dollars, or an estimated 43\% of Polish cultural heritage; over 516,000 individual art pieces were looted (including 2,800 paintings by European painters; 11,000 paintings by Polish painters; 1,400 sculptures, 75,000 manuscripts, 25,000 maps, 90,000 books including over 20,000 printed before 1800, and hundreds of thousands of other items of artistic and historical value). Rewindykacja dóbr kultury Soviet troops afterward contributed to the plunder as well. Looting of Latin and South America The looting of Central and South America by the conquistadors is one of the best-known plunders in the world. Roger Atwood writes in Stealing History: Tomb Raiders, Smugglers, and the Looting of the Ancient World: "Mayan stonework became one of those things that good art museums in America just had to have, and looters in the jungles of southern Mexico and Guatemala worked overtime to meet the demand."Atwood, Roger. Stealing History: Tomb Raiders, Smugglers, and the Looting of the Ancient World. St. Martin's Press. November 18, 2004Colin Woodard. "Destructive Looting Threatens Archaeological Work at Maya Sites". The Chronicle of Higher Education. October 20, 2000 Jeremy McDermott. "Looting a lost civilization. Maya scholars in race with thieves". San Francisco Chronicle. June 7, 2001Princine Lewis. "Archaeologists partnership with Maya villagers pays off in looters' conviction". Vanderbilt Register. June 23, 2004 (See: Maya stelae#Looting) Looting in Mesoamerica has a long tradition and history. Graves are often looted before the archaeologists can reach them, and the artifacts are then sold to wealthy collectors in the United States, Japan, or Europe. Guillermo Cock, a Lima-based archaeologist, says about a recent find of dozens of exquisitely preserved Inca mummies on the outskirts of Peru's capital city, Lima: "The true problem is the looters," he said. "If we leave the cemetery it is going to be destroyed in a few weeks."John Roach. "Dozens of Inca Mummies Discovered Buried in Peru". National Geographic News, March 11, 2004 Looting of Spain Peninsular War During Napoleon's invasion of Spain, Joseph I planned to host the best art of Spain in a museum, so he ordered to collect all possible art works. In 1810, 1000 paintings were looted in Seville by the French Army. Most paintings came from religious buildings. Over 180 paintings were stolen by Marshal Soult, including some of Murillo. El Escorial in Madrid also suffered from looting, were many precious artworks were amassed by the occupant army. When Joseph I was leaving Spain, he abandoned more than 200 paintings from the Spanish royal collection. Some of these paintings were gifted to the Duke of Wellington by Ferdinand VII. The best known looted piece is The Immaculate Conception of Los Venerables. It was looted by Marshal Jean-de-Dieu Soult in 1813 and taken to France. Later, in 1852, it was bought by the Louvre. Vichy Regime made an exchange of artwork with Spanish Government and returned to Spain. 20th century During the 1970s most of the looting was undetected and unpunished. There was no actual legislation that protected archaeological sites, nor there were enforcers of the law in that places. Since 1978, there has been a tremendous development in the framework of legal protection of cultural heritage. 21st century In the decade of the 2010s there has been several cases of looters with metal detectors in archaeological sites. Looting in Africa The looting of African art primarily came about as a result of the Scramble for Africa, which saw many European powers colonize the African continent. A notable example of looted African art is the Benin Bronzes, sacked from the Kingdom of Benin (now southern Nigeria); thousands of these bronze artworks were taken from the Benin royal palace by the British during the Benin Expedition of 1897. Other looted African artefacts include the Rosetta Stone, a key to translating hieroglyphs, which was rediscovered during the French campaign in Egypt and Syria before being claimed by the British. Another example is the Maqdala treasures, taken by the British from Ethiopia. Looting by perpetrator Looting by the British Empire The transformation of theft and plunder as an incentive for troops to institutionalized, indiscriminate looting following military conflict can be observed in the wake of British conquest in Asia, Africa and India. According to one scholar, the looting of artifacts for "both personal and institutional reasons" became "increasingly important in the process of "othering" Oriental and African societies and was exemplified in the professionalism of exploration and the growth of ethnographic departments in museums, the new 'temples of Empire'." Looting, not necessarily of art, became an instrument for the projection of power and the British imperial desire to gather and provide information about the "exotic" cultures and primitive tribes.Michael Carrington. Officers Gentlemen and Thieves: The Looting of Monasteries during the 1903/4. Younghusband Mission to Tibet, Modern Asian Studies 37, 1 (2003), pp 81–109 Empire and authority: Curzon, collisions, character and the Raj, 1899–1905. Michael Carrington. A Ph. D (British Library) One of the most famous examples is the case of the personal initiative by the British ambassador of removing, with the permission of the Ottoman government, the Elgin Marbles from the Parthenon in Athens; many years later they were sold to the British Museum. Other examples include the Benin Bronzes, which were looted by the British from the Kingdom of Benin (now Southern Nigeria) in 1897. Famously, the Rosetta Stone and various other artefacts were taken as war plunder from the French, who had removed them from their Egyptian setting during the French occupation under Napoleon. Looting by Napoleon Rembrandt's Descent from the Cross was looted in 1806 by French soldiers from the Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel, Germany; current location: Hermitage, St. Petersburg. Napoleon's conquests in Europe were followed by a systematic attempt, later more tentatively echoed by Hitler, to take the finest works of art of conquered nations back to the Louvre in Paris for a grand central museum of all Europe. Napoleon boasted: Many works were returned after his fall, but many others were not, and remain in France. Many works confiscated from religious institutions under the French occupation now form the backbone of national museums: "Napoleon's art-loot depots became the foundation of Venice's Accademia, Milan's Brera galleries. His brother Louis founded Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum; brother Joseph started Madrid's Prado" (for the Spanish royal collection).Masterpieces of the Louvre. Time magazine. June 30, 1958 Napoleonic commander and Marechal Nicolas Jean-de-Dieu Soult stole in 1810 six large pictures painted by Murillo in 1668 for the Hospital de la Caridad in Seville. One painting, The Return of the Prodigal Son, is now in the National Gallery of Art, Washington; a second looted painting, The Healing of the Paralytic, is in the National Gallery in London; only two of the original paintings have returned to Seville. Another French general looted several pictures, including four Claudes and Rembrandt's Descent from the Cross, from the Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel in 1806. The stolen goods were later bought by the Empress Josephine and subsequently by the tsar. Ever since 1918, when Russia signed a peace treaty with Germany and Austria, have German negotiators demanded the return of the paintings. This has been refused; the pictures still remain in the Hermitage. Looting by the Union and Confederate Armies during the American Civil War On November 7, 1863, Edward D. Townsend of the Union army wrote General Order No. 360: “Satisfactory evidence having been produced to the War Department that a bronze equestrian statue, unlawfully taken from a private house in Fredericksburg, at the time of the capture of that place by the Union forces, was the private property of Mr. Douglas Gordon, of that city, it is— .Ordered: That it be restored to Mrs. Annie C. Thomas, the sister of Mr. Gordon, who has made application therefor.”O'Brien, Thomas M., and Oliver Diefendorf. General Orders of the War Department, Embracing the Years 1861, 1862 & 1863. Vol. 2. New York, NY: Derby & Miller, 1864, p. 603. Some of Gordon's works of art were recovered through Lafayette C. Baker, chief of the Union secret police.Baker, Lafayette Curry. History of the United States Secret Service. Philadelphia, PA: King & Baird, Printers, 1867, p. 259-260. The United States Congress enacted legislation allowing for claims to be filed for property losses on July 4, 1864. Claims were restricted to loyal citizens. Looting by Nazi Germany General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Allied Commander, accompanied by General Omar N. Bradley and Lieutenant General George S. Patton, Jr., inspects art treasures hidden in a salt mine in Germany. Between 1933 and 1945 the Third Reich engaged in the biggest art theft in history, starting in 1933 with the Jewish population of Germany. During World War II, the Nazis set up special departments "for a limited time for the seizure and securing of objects of cultural value",Letter from Rosenberg to the Reich Commissioner for the East and Reich Commissioner for the Ukraine, April 27, 1942 , as cited in: Nuremberg Trial Proceedings Vol. 4. Twenty-Second Day. December 18, 1945, Morning Session, Document 153-PS, Exhibit USA-381 especially in the Occupied Eastern Territories, including the Baltic states, Ukraine, Hungary and Greece. The Russian imperial residences around St. Petersburg were thoroughly looted and deliberately blown up, so that their restoration is still under way. The Catherine Palace and Peterhof were reduced to smoldering ruins; among the innumerable trophies was the world-famous Amber Room.Peter Bruhn: Das Bernsteinzimmer in Zarskoje Selo bei Sankt-Petersburg, 2nd edition. Berlin, 2004 . In an updated version also available as bibliographical database Das Bernsteinzimmer von Zarskoje Selo Medieval churches of Novgorod and Pskov, with their unique 12th-century frescoes, were systematically plundered and reduced to piles of rubble. Major museums around Moscow, including Yasnaya Polyana, Joseph-Volokolamsk Monastery, and New Jerusalem, faced a similar fate, with their architectural integrity irrevocably impaired. The legal framework and the language of the instructions used by Germany resembles the Lieber Code, but in the Nuremberg Trial proceedings, the victorious Allied armies applied different standards and sentenced the Nazis involved as war criminals. Article 6 of the Charter of the International Military Tribunal of Nuremberg, detailing the Jurisdiction and General Principles, declares the "plunder of public or private property" a war crime,Nuremberg Trial Proceedings Vol. 1, Charter of the International Military Tribunal, II. Jurisdiction and General Principles, Article 6. Yale.edu. Retrieved on 2011-06-12. while the Lieber Code and the actions of the Allied armies in the aftermath of World War II allowed or tolerated the looting. The main objective of the looting is made clear by Dr. Muhlmann, responsible for the securing of all Polish art treasures: "I confirm that the art treasures ... would not have remained in Poland in case of a German victory, but they would have been used to complement German artistic property."Nuremberg Trial Proceedings Vol. 4. Twenty-Second Day. December 18, 1945, Morning Session . Yale.edu. Retrieved on 2011-06-12. One inventory of 39 volumes featuring the looted art and antiques, prepared by the Nazis and discussed during the Nuremberg trials, lists "21,903 Works of Art: 5,281 paintings, pastels, water colors, drawings; 684 miniatures, glass and enamel paintings, illuminated books and manuscripts; 583 sculptures, terra cottas, medallions, and plaques; 2,477 articles of furniture of art historical value; 583 textiles (tapestries, rugs, embroideries, Coptic textiles); 5,825 objects of decorative art (porcelains, bronzes, faience, majolica, ceramics, jewelry, coins, art objects with precious stones); 1,286 East Asiatic art works (bronzes, sculpture, porcelains, paintings, folding screens, weapons); 259 art works of antiquity (sculptures, bronzes, vases, jewelry, bowls, engraved gems, terracottas)." When Allied forces bombed Germany's cities and historic institutions, Germany "began storing the artworks in salt mines and caves for protection from Allied bombing raids. These mines and caves offered the appropriate humidity and temperature conditions for artworks."Anne Rothfeld. Nazi Looted Art. The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration. The Holocaust Records Preservation Project, Part 2. Fall 2002, Vol. 34, No. 3 Much of this art was recovered by the Allied Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives Section of the Office of Military Government, United States, as detailed in a 1995 conference in New York and the published proceedings.Simpson, Elizabeth. The Spoils of War--World War II and Its Aftermath: The Loss, Reappearance, and Recovery of Cultural Property. New York: Harry N. Abrams in association with the Bard Graduate Center, 1997. Looting by the Soviet Union The Eberswalde Hoard from Germany disappeared in 1945 from Berlin and was located in 2004 in a secret depot within Moscow's Pushkin Museum. Priam's treasure The Soviet Union engaged in systematic looting during World War II, particularly of Germany – seeing this as reparations for damage and looting done by Germany in the Soviet Union.Lee, Steven. (2005-05-17) Cultural divide exists over Russian war loot. The New York Times, retrieved 2012-02-11 The Soviets also looted other occupied territories; for example, looting by Soviets was common on the territories theoretically assigned to its ally, communist Poland.Norman Davies, God's Playground, a History of Poland, Columbia University Press, 2005, , p.359Richard C. Raack, Stalin's Drive to the West, 1938–1945: the origins of the Cold War, Stanford University Press, 1995, , p.90 Even Polish Communists were uneasy, as in 1945, the future Chairman of the Polish Council of State, Aleksander Zawadzki, worried that the "raping and looting by the Soviet army would provoke a civil war."Norman Davies, God's Playground, a History of Poland, Columbia University Press, 1982, , p.558 Soviet forces had engaged in plunder on the former eastern territories of Germany that were to be transferred to Poland, stripping it of anything of value. See also other copy online A recently recovered masterwork is Gustave Courbet's Femme nue couchée, looted in Budapest, Hungary, in 1945. Paintings, which were looted by Soviet troops, came also from private German collections by art collectors as Otto Gerstenberg, Bernhard Koehler, Friedrich Carl Siemens (1877–1952), Otto Krebs, Eduard von der Heydt, Eduard Lorenz Lorenz-Meyer or Paul Sachse.Beutekunst: Zurück in die Kindheit, spiegel.de, April 3 1995 In 1998, and after considerable controversy, Russia passed the Federal Law on Cultural Valuables Displaced to the USSR as a Result of the Second World War and Located on the Territory of the Russian Federation, which allowed Russian institutions to keep art works and museum pieces looted during World War 2. Case studies A large number of institutions and museums have at various times been subject to both moral claims and legal claims concerning the provenance of their holdings subject to occasional review and challenge. One example of such a case study can be provided by the Metropolitan Museum of Art's reputation which has experienced a series of allegations and lawsuits about its status as an occasional institutional buyer of looted and stolen antiquities. Since the 1990s the Met has been the subject of numerous investigative reports and books critical of the Met's laissez-faire attitude to acquisition.Peter Watson, Cecilia Todeschini (2007), The Medici Conspiracy: The Illicit Journey of Looted Antiquities from Italy's Tomb Raiders to the World's Greatest MuseumsVernon Silver, The Lost Chalice: The Epic Hunt for a Priceless Masterpiece. Harper Collins Books, 2009. The Met has lost several major lawsuits, notably against the governments of Italy and Turkey, who successfully sought the repatriation of hundreds of ancient Mediterranean and Middle Eastern antiquities, with a total value in the hundreds of millions of dollars. In the late 1990s, long-running investigations by the Tutela del Patrimonio Culturale (TPC), the art crimes division of the Italian Carabinieri, accused the Metropolitan Museum of acquiring "black market" antiquities. TPC investigations in Italy revealed that many ancient Mediterranean objects acquired from the 1960s to the 1990s had been purchased, via a complex network of front companies and unscrupulous dealers, from the criminal gang led by Italian art dealer Giacomo Medici." The Met is also one of many institutional buyers known to have acquired looted artifacts from a Thai-based British "collector", Douglas Latchford."Chasing Aphrodite. "The Kushan Buddhas: Nancy Wiener, Douglas Latchford and New Questions about Ancient Buddhas" (originally posted 1 February 2015) In 2013, the Met announced that it would repatriate to Cambodia two ancient Khmer statues, known as "The Kneeling Attendants" , which it had acquired from Latchford (in fragments) in 1987 and 1992. A spokesperson for the Met stated that the museum had received "dispositive" evidence that the objects had been looted from Koh Ker and illegally exported to the USA.Jason Felch, "Metropolitan Museum says it will return Cambodian statues". Los Angeles Times, 3 May 2013 In addition to the ongoing investigations by the Italian police (TPC), lawsuits brought by the Governments of Italy, Turkey and Cambodia against the Metropolitan Museum of Art contend that the acquisition of the Euphronius krater may have demonstrated a pattern of less than rigorous investigation into the origin and legitimate provenance of highly desirable antiquities for the museum's collections. Examples include, the Cloisters Cross, a large Romanesque cross carved from walrus ivory, the Karun Treasure, also known as the Lydian Hoard, a collection of 200 gold, silver, bronze and earthenware objects, dating from the 7th Century BCE, and part of a larger haul of some 450 objects looted by local tomb robbers from four ancient royal tombs near Sardis, in Turkey in 1966–67."Gold hippocampus from Lydian Hoard found". The History Blog, 28 November 2012 After a six-year legal battle that reportedly cost the Turkish government UK£25 million"King Croesus's golden brooch to be returned to Turkey".Constanze Letch, The Guardian, 26 November 2012 the case ended dramatically after it was revealed that the minutes of the Met's own acquisition committee described how a curator had actually visited the looted burial mounds in Turkey to confirm the authenticity of the objects. The Met was forced to concede that staff had known the objects were stolen when it bought them, and the collection was repatriated to Turkey in 1993. The Morgantina treasure is a hoard of ornate Hellenistic silverware dated 3rd century BC, valued at perhaps up to US$ 100 million, acquired by the Met in the early 1980s.
Revised:  The Carabinieri stated that the warehouses contained 10,000 artifacts worth 50 billion lire (about $35 million).Andrew L. Slayman. Geneva Seizure. Archaeology. May 3, 1998, updated September 14, 1998 In 1997, Giacomo Medici was arrested; his operation is believed to be "one of the largest and most sophisticated antiquities networks in the world, responsible for illegally digging up and spiriting away thousands of top-drawer pieces and passing them on to the most elite end of the international art market."Men's Vogue, November/December 2006, Vol. 2, No. 3, pg. 46. Medici was sentenced in 2004 by a Rome court to ten years in prison and a fine of 10 million euros, "the largest penalty ever meted out for antiquities crime in Italy." In another, unrelated case in 1999, the Getty had to hand over three antiquities to Italy after determining they were stolen. The objects included a Greek red-figure kylix from the 5th century BC signed by the painter, Onesimos, and the potter, Euphronios, looted from the Etruscan site of Cerveteri; a torso of the god Mithra from the 2nd century AD; and the head of a youth by the Greek sculptor Polykleitos.Andrew L. Slayman. Getty Returns Italian Artifacts. Archaeology. Volume 52 Number 3, May/June 1999 According to the New York Times, the Getty refused for several years to return the antiquities to their rightful owners.Alessandra Stanley. Getty to Give 3 Artifacts Back to Italy. New York Times. February 4, 1999 Yet another case emerged in 2007, when Italy's art-theft investigation squad discovered a hidden cache of ancient marble carvings depicting early gladiators, the lower portion of a marble statue of a man in a toga and a piece of a column. Italian Culture Minister Francesco Rutelli used the case to underline the importance of these artifacts for Italy.Rare gladiator marbles discovered in major Italian art bust. Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. January 24, 2007 Looting of South East Asia During their occupation of Indochina, the French government removed various statues and other objects from the region. During its existence, the Khmer Empire was regularly raided by its neighbours, which resulted in its cultural heritage being distributed widely across the region.Briggs, Palmer. Ancient Khmer Empire The major historian of the Khmer Empire, Lawrence Palmer Briggs, regularly mentions these raids—for example, the sack of Angkor in 1430–31 by the Siamese who carried off their loot to Ayutthaya,Briggs, Palmer. The Ancient Khmer Empire, p258 after which "people fled from the 'great and glorious capital' of Khmer civilisation as if it were ridden with plague".Briggs, Palmer. The Ancient Khmer Empire, p261 Consequently, the cultural heritage of the region was already widely spread by the time the French founded their protectorate in IndoChina in 1864. Briggs describes Preah Khan Kompong Svay as "shamefully looted" in the late 19th century by Louis Delaporte, "who carried the spoils away to French museums (thus beginning the systematic looting of Cambodian temples for the benefit of public and private collections of Europe and America)".Briggs, Palmer. The Ancient Khmer Empire, p 222 He also describes how French tourists well into the 20th century carried off many statues.Briggs, Palmer. The Ancient Khmer Empire, p77 Therefore, by the early 20th century it was rare to find Khmer objects in situ and local and foreign collectors, particularly in France, had built up collections of Khmer objects. Many objects from the region were exported to Europe and elsewhere and ended up in museums such as the Guimet. During the second world war, whilst France was occupied by Nazi Germany, the Indochina region was controlled variously by the Japanese, locally, and after the war, the French regained control. There followed a period of 35 years of disruption and warfare, including Dien Ben Phu and the Vietnam war. Thereafter Cambodia fell under the control of the notorious Khmer Rouge regime. Some objects left the country during that period, either to save them from destruction or for looting purposes. Reports have suggested that where objects have been moved, local officials and armed forces (both before and after the periods of turmoil) were responsible.see movie Angkor for Sale directed Adrian Maben 1997 In 1992, a report in The Christian Science Monitor described art experts' concerns about a "rampant degradation of archeological sites and an accelerating trade in stolen artifacts sweeping Southeast Asia" as a consequence of war in Cambodia and instability in the region.Tefft, Sheila. "Plundering of Artifacts Sweeps Asia", The Christian Science Monitor, 15 October 1992. Retrieved 26 June 2016. Statues were being stripped from Angkor Wat and other sites by smuggling rings often working in collusion with military and political officials, including a major network in Chiang Mai run by a former government minister. The British-born Thai-based collector Douglas Latchford says that when he and other collectors traversed Cambodia and Thailand in the 1960s, buying and trading Cambodian antiquities, they were not concerned about provenance, but regarded themselves as rescuers of artefacts that otherwise might have been neglected or destroyed.Mashberg, Tom, "Claims of Looting Shadow Expert in Khmer Art", The New York Times, 12 December 2012. Many of the objects they purchased were later donated or sold to museums. In the 2000s, evidence that the artefacts had been looted persuaded a number of major museums around the world to return the objects to Cambodia."In 2012, Latchford was identified in [US] federal court records as a middleman in the trafficking of looted antiquities from Southeast Asia. Authorities allege Latchford knowingly purchased two looted Khmer sculptures from “an organized looting network” and conspired with the London auction house Spink to obtain false export permits for them. The case was a civil lawsuit, and Latchford was not charged with a crime. But after a lengthy legal battle, Sotheby’s agreed to return its sculpture to Cambodia. Soon after, the Norton Simon Museum, Christie’s auction house and the Metropolitan Museum of Art all returned sculptures tied to Latchford." Chasing Aphrodite: "The Kushan Buddhas: Nancy Wiener, Douglas Latchford and New Questions about Ancient Buddhas" (originally posted 1 February 2015) Among the objects sold or donated to major museums by Latchford are a number of rare ancient Khmer statues, reportedly looted from the temple site of Koh Ker in Cambodia, and at least two Indian seated Kushan Buddhas, looted from the ancient Indian city of Mathura. One of the seated Buddhas was originally offered—via Manhattan dealer Nancy Wiener—to Canada's Royal Ontario Museum, but they ultimately declined to buy it, owing to its dubious provenance. In 2000 it was bought by the National Gallery of Australia, but subsequent investigations exposed the seated Buddha as a looted artwork, and it has since been repatriated to India. Other US museums reported to have received looted Asian artefacts from Latchford include the Denver Museum of Art, the Kimbell Museum in Ft. Worth, Texas, and the Norton Simon Museum.Chasing Aphrodite: "The Met Returns Two Khmer Statues to Cambodia, Citing Clear Evidence Of Looting" (posted 3 May 2013) In 2013, the Met announced that it would repatriate to Cambodia two ancient Khmer statues, known as "The Kneeling Attendants", which it had acquired from Latchford (in fragments) in 1987 and 1992."Metropolitan Museum of Art to Return Two Khmer Sculptures to Cambodia", metmuseum.org A spokesperson for the Met stated that the museum had received "dispositive" evidence that the objects had been looted from Koh Ker and illegally exported to the United States.Felch, Jason, "Metropolitan Museum says it will return Cambodian statues", Los Angeles Times, 3 May 2013 In 2015, the Cleveland Museum of Art voluntarily returned to Cambodia a 10th-century sculpture of the Hindu monkey god Hanuman, after a curator from the museum uncovered evidence that it had been looted—the statue's head having appeared on the market in Bangkok in 1968 during the Vietnam War and its body having appeared on the market in 1972 during the Cambodian Civil War. The museum's director said, "Our research revealed a very real likelihood that it was removed from a site enormously important to the kingdom of Cambodia during a terrible time and its return was completely consistent with the highest legal and fiduciary standards."Litt, Steven. "Cleveland Museum of Art returns Hanuman sculpture to Cambodia, saying new evidence indicates it was probably looted", cleveland.com, 11 May 2015. Retrieved 27 June 2016. Tess Davis, an archaeologist and lawyer for the Antiquities Coalition, praised the museum's decision but said, “The Hanuman first surfaced on the market while Cambodia was in the midst of a war and facing genocide. How could anyone not know this was stolen property? The only answer is that no one wanted to know.”Tharoor, Kanishk. "Museums and looted art: the ethical dilemma of preserving world cultures", theguardian.com, 29 June 2015. Retrieved 27 June 2016. Looting of Poland Throne of Stanisław August Poniatowski displayed in the Moscow Kremlin. The throne was looted after the collapse of the November Uprising in the 1830s. In the 1920s, the Soviet government returned it to Poland, yet it was deliberately destroyed by the Germans during World War II."The last king of Poland was Stanisław August Poniatowski. His royal throne, or mainly its backrest, was decorated with eagles beautifully embroidered in gold and silver, symbolizing Poland. When the Germans seized Warsaw in World War II, the governor of German-occupied Poland ordered the eagles taken down and presented to German officers as a souvenir." The Załuski Library, the first public library in Poland, was founded by two brothers, Józef Andrzej Załuski, crown referendary and bishop of Kiev, and Andrzej Stanisław Załuski, crown chancellor and bishop of Cracow. The library was considered one of the most important libraries of the world, featuring a collection of about 400,000 printed items, manuscripts, artworks, scientific instruments, and plant and animal specimens. Located in Warsaw's Daniłowiczowski Palace, it was looted in the aftermath of the second Partition of Poland and Kościuszko Uprising in 1794 by Russian troops on orders from Russian Tsarina Catherine II; the stolen artworks were transported to St. Petersburg and became part of the Russian Imperial Library, which was founded one year later. Although some pieces were returned by the Soviet Union in 1921 and were burned during the Warsaw Uprising against German forces, other parts of the collection have still not been returned by Russia. Polish scientists have been allowed to access and study the objects.What's On. Library Anniversary. The Warsaw Voice. August 18, 1997. The Polish Crown Jewels were removed by the Prussians in 1795 after the Third Partition of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. After the collapse of the November Uprising, literary and art treasures were removed from Poland. Poland regained some of the artefacts after the Treaty of Riga, comprising the furnishings of the Warsaw Castle and the Wawel Castle. During the Second World War, Germany tried to destroy Poland completely and exterminate its population as well as culture. Countless art objects were looted, as Germany systematically carried out a plan of looting prepared even before the start of hostilities (see also Nazi plunder). Twenty-five museums and many other facilities were destroyed. The total cost of German theft and destruction of Polish art is estimated at 20 billion dollars, or an estimated 43\% of Polish cultural heritage; over 516,000 individual art pieces were looted (including 2,800 paintings by European painters; 11,000 paintings by Polish painters; 1,400 sculptures, 75,000 manuscripts, 25,000 maps, 90,000 books including over 20,000 printed before 1800, and hundreds of thousands of other items of artistic and historical value). Rewindykacja dóbr kultury Soviet troops afterward contributed to the plunder as well. Looting of Latin and South America The looting of Central and South America by the conquistadors is one of the best-known plunders in the world. Roger Atwood writes in Stealing History: Tomb Raiders, Smugglers, and the Looting of the Ancient World: "Mayan stonework became one of those things that good art museums in America just had to have, and looters in the jungles of southern Mexico and Guatemala worked overtime to meet the demand."Atwood, Roger. Stealing History: Tomb Raiders, Smugglers, and the Looting of the Ancient World. St. Martin's Press. November 18, 2004Colin Woodard. "Destructive Looting Threatens Archaeological Work at Maya Sites". The Chronicle of Higher Education. October 20, 2000 Jeremy McDermott. "Looting a lost civilization. Maya scholars in race with thieves". San Francisco Chronicle. June 7, 2001Princine Lewis. "Archaeologists partnership with Maya villagers pays off in looters' conviction". Vanderbilt Register. June 23, 2004 (See: Maya stelae#Looting) Looting in Mesoamerica has a long tradition and history. Graves are often looted before the archaeologists can reach them, and the artifacts are then sold to wealthy collectors in the United States, Japan, or Europe. Guillermo Cock, a Lima-based archaeologist, says about a recent find of dozens of exquisitely preserved Inca mummies on the outskirts of Peru's capital city, Lima: "The true problem is the looters," he said. "If we leave the cemetery it is going to be destroyed in a few weeks."John Roach. "Dozens of Inca Mummies Discovered Buried in Peru". National Geographic News, March 11, 2004 Looting of Spain Peninsular War During Napoleon's invasion of Spain, Joseph I planned to host the best art of Spain in a museum, so he ordered to collect all possible art works. In 1810, 1000 paintings were looted in Seville by the French Army. Most paintings came from religious buildings. Over 180 paintings were stolen by Marshal Soult, including some of Murillo. El Escorial in Madrid also suffered from looting, were many precious artworks were amassed by the occupant army. When Joseph I was leaving Spain, he abandoned more than 200 paintings from the Spanish royal collection. Some of these paintings were gifted to the Duke of Wellington by Ferdinand VII. The best known looted piece is The Immaculate Conception of Los Venerables. It was looted by Marshal Jean-de-Dieu Soult in 1813 and taken to France. Later, in 1852, it was bought by the Louvre. Vichy Regime made an exchange of artwork with Spanish Government and returned to Spain. Looting of Africa The looting of African art primarily came about as a result of the Scramble for Africa, which saw many European powers colonize the African continent. A notable example of looted African art is the Benin Bronzes, sacked from the Kingdom of Benin (now southern Nigeria); thousands of these bronze artworks were taken from the Benin royal palace by the British during the Benin Expedition of 1897. Other looted African artefacts include the Rosetta Stone, a key to translating hieroglyphs, which was rediscovered during the French campaign in Egypt and Syria before being claimed by the British. Another example is the Maqdala treasures, taken by the British from Ethiopia. 20th century During the 1970s most of the looting was undetected and unpunished. There was no actual legislation that protected archaeological sites, nor there were enforcers of the law in that places. Since 1978, there has been a tremendous development in the framework of legal protection of cultural heritage. 21st century In the decade of the 2010s there has been several cases of looters with metal detectors in archaeological sites. Looting by perpetrator Looting by the British Empire The transformation of theft and plunder as an incentive for troops to institutionalized, indiscriminate looting following military conflict can be observed in the wake of British conquest in Asia, Africa and India. According to one scholar, the looting of artifacts for "both personal and institutional reasons" became "increasingly important in the process of "othering" Oriental and African societies and was exemplified in the professionalism of exploration and the growth of ethnographic departments in museums, the new 'temples of Empire'." Looting, not necessarily of art, became an instrument for the projection of power and the British imperial desire to gather and provide information about the "exotic" cultures and primitive tribes.Michael Carrington. Officers Gentlemen and Thieves: The Looting of Monasteries during the 1903/4. Younghusband Mission to Tibet, Modern Asian Studies 37, 1 (2003), pp 81–109 Empire and authority: Curzon, collisions, character and the Raj, 1899–1905. Michael Carrington. A Ph. D (British Library) One of the most famous examples is the case of the personal initiative by the British ambassador of removing, with the permission of the Ottoman government, the Elgin Marbles from the Parthenon in Athens; many years later they were sold to the British Museum. Other examples include the Benin Bronzes, which were looted by the British from the Kingdom of Benin (now Southern Nigeria) in 1897. Famously, the Rosetta Stone and various other artefacts were taken as war plunder from the French, who had removed them from their Egyptian setting during the French occupation under Napoleon. Looting by Napoleon Rembrandt's Descent from the Cross was looted in 1806 by French soldiers from the Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel, Germany; current location: Hermitage, St. Petersburg. Napoleon's conquests in Europe were followed by a systematic attempt, later more tentatively echoed by Hitler, to take the finest works of art of conquered nations back to the Louvre in Paris for a grand central museum of all Europe. Napoleon boasted: Many works were returned after his fall, but many others were not, and remain in France. Many works confiscated from religious institutions under the French occupation now form the backbone of national museums: "Napoleon's art-loot depots became the foundation of Venice's Accademia, Milan's Brera galleries. His brother Louis founded Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum; brother Joseph started Madrid's Prado" (for the Spanish royal collection).Masterpieces of the Louvre. Time magazine. June 30, 1958 Napoleonic commander and Marechal Nicolas Jean-de-Dieu Soult stole in 1810 six large pictures painted by Murillo in 1668 for the Hospital de la Caridad in Seville. One painting, The Return of the Prodigal Son, is now in the National Gallery of Art, Washington; a second looted painting, The Healing of the Paralytic, is in the National Gallery in London; only two of the original paintings have returned to Seville. Another French general looted several pictures, including four Claudes and Rembrandt's Descent from the Cross, from the Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel in 1806. The stolen goods were later bought by the Empress Josephine and subsequently by the tsar. Ever since 1918, when Russia signed a peace treaty with Germany and Austria, have German negotiators demanded the return of the paintings. This has been refused; the pictures still remain in the Hermitage. Looting by the Union and Confederate Armies during the American Civil War On November 7, 1863, Edward D. Townsend of the Union army wrote General Order No. 360: “Satisfactory evidence having been produced to the War Department that a bronze equestrian statue, unlawfully taken from a private house in Fredericksburg, at the time of the capture of that place by the Union forces, was the private property of Mr. Douglas Gordon, of that city, it is— .Ordered: That it be restored to Mrs. Annie C. Thomas, the sister of Mr. Gordon, who has made application therefor.”O'Brien, Thomas M., and Oliver Diefendorf. General Orders of the War Department, Embracing the Years 1861, 1862 & 1863. Vol. 2. New York, NY: Derby & Miller, 1864, p. 603. Some of Gordon's works of art were recovered through Lafayette C. Baker, chief of the Union secret police.Baker, Lafayette Curry. History of the United States Secret Service. Philadelphia, PA: King & Baird, Printers, 1867, p. 259-260. The United States Congress enacted legislation allowing for claims to be filed for property losses on July 4, 1864. Claims were restricted to loyal citizens. Looting by Nazi Germany General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Allied Commander, accompanied by General Omar N. Bradley and Lieutenant General George S. Patton, Jr., inspects art treasures hidden in a salt mine in Germany. Between 1933 and 1945 the Third Reich engaged in the biggest art theft in history, starting in 1933 with the Jewish population of Germany. During World War II, the Nazis set up special departments "for a limited time for the seizure and securing of objects of cultural value",Letter from Rosenberg to the Reich Commissioner for the East and Reich Commissioner for the Ukraine, April 27, 1942 , as cited in: Nuremberg Trial Proceedings Vol. 4. Twenty-Second Day. December 18, 1945, Morning Session, Document 153-PS, Exhibit USA-381 especially in the Occupied Eastern Territories, including the Baltic states, Ukraine, Hungary and Greece. The Russian imperial residences around St. Petersburg were thoroughly looted and deliberately blown up, so that their restoration is still under way. The Catherine Palace and Peterhof were reduced to smoldering ruins; among the innumerable trophies was the world-famous Amber Room.Peter Bruhn: Das Bernsteinzimmer in Zarskoje Selo bei Sankt-Petersburg, 2nd edition. Berlin, 2004 . In an updated version also available as bibliographical database Das Bernsteinzimmer von Zarskoje Selo Medieval churches of Novgorod and Pskov, with their unique 12th-century frescoes, were systematically plundered and reduced to piles of rubble. Major museums around Moscow, including Yasnaya Polyana, Joseph-Volokolamsk Monastery, and New Jerusalem, faced a similar fate, with their architectural integrity irrevocably impaired. The legal framework and the language of the instructions used by Germany resembles the Lieber Code, but in the Nuremberg Trial proceedings, the victorious Allied armies applied different standards and sentenced the Nazis involved as war criminals. Article 6 of the Charter of the International Military Tribunal of Nuremberg, detailing the Jurisdiction and General Principles, declares the "plunder of public or private property" a war crime,Nuremberg Trial Proceedings Vol. 1, Charter of the International Military Tribunal, II. Jurisdiction and General Principles, Article 6. Yale.edu. Retrieved on 2011-06-12. while the Lieber Code and the actions of the Allied armies in the aftermath of World War II allowed or tolerated the looting. The main objective of the looting is made clear by Dr. Muhlmann, responsible for the securing of all Polish art treasures: "I confirm that the art treasures ... would not have remained in Poland in case of a German victory, but they would have been used to complement German artistic property."Nuremberg Trial Proceedings Vol. 4. Twenty-Second Day. December 18, 1945, Morning Session . Yale.edu. Retrieved on 2011-06-12. One inventory of 39 volumes featuring the looted art and antiques, prepared by the Nazis and discussed during the Nuremberg trials, lists "21,903 Works of Art: 5,281 paintings, pastels, water colors, drawings; 684 miniatures, glass and enamel paintings, illuminated books and manuscripts; 583 sculptures, terra cottas, medallions, and plaques; 2,477 articles of furniture of art historical value; 583 textiles (tapestries, rugs, embroideries, Coptic textiles); 5,825 objects of decorative art (porcelains, bronzes, faience, majolica, ceramics, jewelry, coins, art objects with precious stones); 1,286 East Asiatic art works (bronzes, sculpture, porcelains, paintings, folding screens, weapons); 259 art works of antiquity (sculptures, bronzes, vases, jewelry, bowls, engraved gems, terracottas)." When Allied forces bombed Germany's cities and historic institutions, Germany "began storing the artworks in salt mines and caves for protection from Allied bombing raids. These mines and caves offered the appropriate humidity and temperature conditions for artworks."Anne Rothfeld. Nazi Looted Art. The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration. The Holocaust Records Preservation Project, Part 2. Fall 2002, Vol. 34, No. 3 Much of this art was recovered by the Allied Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives Section of the Office of Military Government, United States, as detailed in a 1995 conference in New York and the published proceedings.Simpson, Elizabeth. The Spoils of War--World War II and Its Aftermath: The Loss, Reappearance, and Recovery of Cultural Property. New York: Harry N. Abrams in association with the Bard Graduate Center, 1997. Looting by the Soviet Union The Eberswalde Hoard from Germany disappeared in 1945 from Berlin and was located in 2004 in a secret depot within Moscow's Pushkin Museum. Priam's treasure The Soviet Union engaged in systematic looting during World War II, particularly of Germany – seeing this as reparations for damage and looting done by Germany in the Soviet Union.Lee, Steven. (2005-05-17) Cultural divide exists over Russian war loot. The New York Times, retrieved 2012-02-11 The Soviets also looted other occupied territories; for example, looting by Soviets was common on the territories theoretically assigned to its ally, communist Poland.Norman Davies, God's Playground, a History of Poland, Columbia University Press, 2005, , p.359Richard C. Raack, Stalin's Drive to the West, 1938–1945: the origins of the Cold War, Stanford University Press, 1995, , p.90 Even Polish Communists were uneasy, as in 1945, the future Chairman of the Polish Council of State, Aleksander Zawadzki, worried that the "raping and looting by the Soviet army would provoke a civil war."Norman Davies, God's Playground, a History of Poland, Columbia University Press, 1982, , p.558 Soviet forces had engaged in plunder on the former eastern territories of Germany that were to be transferred to Poland, stripping it of anything of value. See also other copy online A recently recovered masterwork is Gustave Courbet's Femme nue couchée, looted in Budapest, Hungary, in 1945. Paintings, which were looted by Soviet troops, came also from private German collections by art collectors as Otto Gerstenberg, Bernhard Koehler, Friedrich Carl Siemens (1877–1952), Otto Krebs, Eduard von der Heydt, Eduard Lorenz Lorenz-Meyer or Paul Sachse.Beutekunst: Zurück in die Kindheit, spiegel.de, April 3 1995 In 1998, and after considerable controversy, Russia passed the Federal Law on Cultural Valuables Displaced to the USSR as a Result of the Second World War and Located on the Territory of the Russian Federation, which allowed Russian institutions to keep art works and museum pieces looted during World War 2. Case studies A large number of institutions and museums have at various times been subject to both moral claims and legal claims concerning the provenance of their holdings subject to occasional review and challenge. One example of such a case study can be provided by the Metropolitan Museum of Art's reputation which has experienced a series of allegations and lawsuits about its status as an occasional institutional buyer of looted and stolen antiquities. Since the 1990s the Met has been the subject of numerous investigative reports and books critical of the Met's laissez-faire attitude to acquisition.Peter Watson, Cecilia Todeschini (2007), The Medici Conspiracy: The Illicit Journey of Looted Antiquities from Italy's Tomb Raiders to the World's Greatest MuseumsVernon Silver, The Lost Chalice: The Epic Hunt for a Priceless Masterpiece. Harper Collins Books, 2009. The Met has lost several major lawsuits, notably against the governments of Italy and Turkey, who successfully sought the repatriation of hundreds of ancient Mediterranean and Middle Eastern antiquities, with a total value in the hundreds of millions of dollars. In the late 1990s, long-running investigations by the Tutela del Patrimonio Culturale (TPC), the art crimes division of the Italian Carabinieri, accused the Metropolitan Museum of acquiring "black market" antiquities. TPC investigations in Italy revealed that many ancient Mediterranean objects acquired from the 1960s to the 1990s had been purchased, via a complex network of front companies and unscrupulous dealers, from the criminal gang led by Italian art dealer Giacomo Medici." The Met is also one of many institutional buyers known to have acquired looted artifacts from a Thai-based British "collector", Douglas Latchford."Chasing Aphrodite. "The Kushan Buddhas: Nancy Wiener, Douglas Latchford and New Questions about Ancient Buddhas" (originally posted 1 February 2015) In 2013, the Met announced that it would repatriate to Cambodia two ancient Khmer statues, known as "The Kneeling Attendants" , which it had acquired from Latchford (in fragments) in 1987 and 1992. A spokesperson for the Met stated that the museum had received "dispositive" evidence that the objects had been looted from Koh Ker and illegally exported to the USA.Jason Felch, "Metropolitan Museum says it will return Cambodian statues". Los Angeles Times, 3 May 2013 In addition to the ongoing investigations by the Italian police (TPC), lawsuits brought by the Governments of Italy, Turkey and Cambodia against the Metropolitan Museum of Art contend that the acquisition of the Euphronius krater may have demonstrated a pattern of less than rigorous investigation into the origin and legitimate provenance of highly desirable antiquities for the museum's collections. Examples include, the Cloisters Cross, a large Romanesque cross carved from walrus ivory, the Karun Treasure, also known as the Lydian Hoard, a collection of 200 gold, silver, bronze and earthenware objects, dating from the 7th Century BCE, and part of a larger haul of some 450 objects looted by local tomb robbers from four ancient royal tombs near Sardis, in Turkey in 1966–67."Gold hippocampus from Lydian Hoard found". The History Blog, 28 November 2012 After a six-year legal battle that reportedly cost the Turkish government UK£25 million"King Croesus's golden brooch to be returned to Turkey".Constanze Letch, The Guardian, 26 November 2012 the case ended dramatically after it was revealed that the minutes of the Met's own acquisition committee described how a curator had actually visited the looted burial mounds in Turkey to confirm the authenticity of the objects. The Met was forced to concede that staff had known the objects were stolen when it bought them, and the collection was repatriated to Turkey in 1993. The Morgantina treasure is a hoard of ornate Hellenistic silverware dated 3rd century BC, valued at perhaps up to US$ 100 million, acquired by the Met in the early 1980s.
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