How officialdom’s zombie statistics and bogus data continue to plague the art market and antiquities

How officialdom’s zombie statistics and bogus data continue to plague the art market and antiquities

In February 2019, the ADA took part in a BBC radio programme entitled Zombie Statistics. It investigated the problem of fake news and misuse of data to promote propaganda, notably against the international art market.

Journalist Ed Butler took UNESCO to task for its manipulation of statistics to suit its policies, while the celebrated statistics guru Dr Tim Harford explained why confirmation bias – the disinclination to check the validity of information that supports your case – feeds into the misuse of data and fake news.

“If you think right is on your side, then you are not going to be too careful checking the claims that fit nicely in your world view,” he concluded.

Harford went on to explain how the publishing of false data by a respected institution or official body gets repeated “ad nauseam” by others and the media until it becomes the truth.

“What’s alarming is that this is affecting policy,” he warned, as instead of creating policy from reliable evidence, you get “policy affected evidence”.

This problem is rampant when it comes to the art market, particularly with antiquities.

The ADA and IADAA have conducted extensive research into this phenomenon and have long exercised a policy of insisting on providing clear primary sources for data, complete with a weblink, where possible, as well as advising anyone who looks at the data to check the sources to satisfy themselves that they are accurate.

This is the only way to reassure an audience that what you are telling them is true. Never ask them to take your word for it.

Taking all of this into account, it is worth reflecting on how a current example of the misuse of data is being used to influence policy makers.

In 2011, the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime (UNODC) published a report entitled Estimating Illicit Financial Flows Resulting from Drug Trafficking and Other Transnational Organized Crimes. On page 36 it gave a value range of $3.4 billion to $6.3 billion* as the GFI estimates of the global proceeds of crime for art and cultural property, stating this estimate was based on information from Interpol and the International Scientific and Professional Advisory Council of the UN Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice Programme.

Apart from the broad range of these values and the fact that they are estimates, at least one of the quoted sources, Interpol, has declared that it has never had any figures – nor is ever likely to obtain any – that could allow it to make such a judgment on the level of art crime. Nor do these figures relate to trafficking, but to all art and cultural property related crime. That’s an awful lot of ifs and buts.

$6 billion to $8 billion

The UNODC report states that its Interpol and UN-related figures come from the February 2011 Global Financial Integrity (GFI) report by Jeremy Hakin, Transnational crime in the Developing World, and World Bank indicators (for current GDP). As can be seen from page 47 of that report, it actually quotes three sets of figures, $300 million to $6 billion, $4 billion to $5 billion and $6 billion to $8 billion. It gives, as its source for the first, page 221 of Stealing History: Tomb Raiders, Smugglers, and the Looting of the Ancient World, by Roger Atwood from 2004. For the second it gives the September 19, 1999 article from The Atlanta Journal Constitution by Mike Toner, The Past in Peril; Buying, Selling, Stealing History. For the third, it gives page 52 of the 2010 report International Report on Crime Prevention and Community Safety: Trends and Perspectives, from the International Centre for the Prevention of Crime, by Idriss, Manar, Manon Jendly, Jacqui Karn, and Massimiliano Mulone.

Crucially, Hakin then states: “This report creates a range by taking the average of the low estimates and the average of the high estimates reported above. The result is an annual value of $3.4 to $6.3 billion.”*

Checking the sources of these sources we come up with the following:

–      $300 million to $6 billion: Currently unavailable

–      $4 billion to $5 billion: Currently unavailable

–      $6 billion to $8 billion: International Scientific and Professional Advisory Council of the United Nations Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice Programme. ISPAC (2009). Organized crime in Art and Antiquities. Selected Papers from the international conference held at Courtmayeur, Italy 12-14th December 2008. Milan: ISPAC.

While the ADA and IADAA intend to research these sources further, it is worth pointing out that they date back, at least, to 2004, 1999 and 2008, and possibly further, so, like the UNODC report itself, hardly relevant for 2023.

While the figures above refer to the 2011 GFI report, page 35 of the same GFI report from 2017 (six years later) puts the estimated value of “the global revenue generated from the illicit trade in cultural property” at “approximately US$1.2 billion to $1.6 billion”. It extrapolates this from the 2008 ISPAC global art crime estimate of $6 billion to $8 billion (see above), based on the assumption that 80% of such crime is fraud-based. In turn, it takes this estimate from two sources: John Powers’ February 2016 article for the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners, Fakes, Forgeries and Dirty Deals: Global Fight against Amorphous Art Fraud, and Kris Hollington’s July 22, 2014 Newsweek article, After Drugs and Guns, Art Theft Is the Biggest Criminal Enterprise in the World, a claim now known to be wrong and without foundation.

Powers’ article is no longer available via the web, but Hollington attributes the $6 billion to $8 billion figure to the FBI, without giving a specific source, but would seem to be ISPAC, as shown above.

However, In 2013, the FBI art crime unit estimated all art crime globally concerning everything from Contemporary art to stamps, at around $4 billion to $6 billion. That included crimes such as domestic burglary (the largest single contributor to the figures), vandalism, fraud and so on.

A failure to check Hansard

Another UNODC report, from 2016, repeats two claims:

• The Museums Association has estimated that profits from the illicit antiquities trade range from $225 million and $3 billion per year.

AND

• The organized Crime Group of the United Kingdom Metropolitan Police and INTERPOL has calculated that profits from the illicit antiquities trade amounted to between $300 million and $6 billion per year.

The UNODC gave as its source for the claims the UK House of Commons Culture Select Committee hearings in Cultural property: Return and Illicit Trade, seventh report, volumes 1, 2 and 3, in the year 2000.

What the UNODC clearly did not do was to check that House of Commons source, still available today in Hansard, the official parliamentary record. If it had, it would have found that neither claim stood up.

In the case of the Museums Association, Hansard (Chapter II The problem of illicit trade, The nature and scale of illicit trade paragraph 9) reports: 

“The scale of the illicit trade taken is said to be very considerable. According to the Museums Association, ‘as an underground, secretive activity, it is impossible to attach a firm financial value to the illicit trade in cultural material. Estimates of its worldwide extent vary from £150 million up to £2 billion per year.”

The Museums Association talks about “cultural material”, i.e. all art and antiques, not antiquities, gives a range of figures from £150 million to £2 billion a year and attributes it to Geraldine Norman’s Independent article, Sale of the Centuries, from November 24, 1990, which shows no such figures, leading to the conclusion that they have actually taken them from page 23 of the Brodie, Doole and Watson report Stealing History, 2000, which wrongly attributes the figure to Norman. Again, the Museums Association appears not to have checked its primary source.

With regard to the Met Police calculation, Hansard reports the following:

“(Detective Chief Superintendent Coles of the Met Police) I anticipated a question along these lines before I came here. I conducted some research, going back over 10 years, to try and find out where figures that have been bandied around about this subject emanated from. One of the figures is $3 billion. I have found reports going back 10 years where there is an estimate as high as $6 billion. At the other extreme of the scale the suggestion is that it could be as low as $300 million. To try and put some definitive figure upon this scale, my colleague, Miss Stevenson, has conducted some research in the last few days, and it might be better if she explained her research to you.”

“(Detective Constable StevensonI think what we have to actually state from the start is that the cases are really anecdotal. There are no statistics kept. We have to bear in mind that the whole trade, whether illicit or legal, actually encompasses jewellery, works of art and antiquities, and as there is no actual Home Office information that is kept we have had to turn to the insurance companies and the insurance industry to get the figures we have.

“A loss adjuster I spoke to estimated that this trade is costing the public between £300-£500 million per year in the United Kingdom alone. I can break that down to where he got those figures from. The Association of British Insurers on average record losses by theft in both domestic and commercial as being somewhere in the region of about £600 million per year. Out of that figure they assume that roughly half relates to domestic theft. So, leaving aside your office break-ins or something like that and computer thefts, they would say that approximately £300 million goes on domestic burglaries, and out of the domestic thefts, roughly, in the settlement, two thirds of the items in that category are jewellery, silver, collectibles and fine art. That accounts for the first £200 million of insured losses.

“Secondly, they state that Lloyds is excluded from the total and, of course, the majority of very high value fine art and antiques are insured through Lloyds. We do know that worldwide Lloyds pay out in the region of about £100 million into the fine art and jewellery category. So, it is possible to estimate that between 40 and 50 per cent of that is attributable to the United Kingdom. That takes the figure to roughly £250 million. Then they looked at the area of uninsured loss, which is extremely difficult to estimate. This would include properties such as National Trust properties, English Heritage and churches, but they reckon that is somewhere in the region of £75 million per annum. Then there are those losses which go entirely unreported, which, of course, you can only guess at, but they arrive somewhere in the region of £300, £400 or £500 million per year.”

As this evidence shows, the $300 million to $6 billion figure is no more than hearsay, which is immediately corrected by the better informed officer, who retorts that no such information or statistics are available. Instead, she reports figures estimated by insurance companies based on losses that are chiefly the result of domestic burglaries – nothing to do with the art market at all, let alone antiquities or trafficking.

As the 2016 report and our research lead us to believe, the UK House of Commons investigation from 2000 is a highly credible candidate as the source of the $6 billion figure later used by the FBI and others.

Remember, it was dismissed hearsay with sources stretching as far back as 1990.

Dubious data from decades ago used to push 2023 report

Now move forward to 2023 and the Financial Action Task Force report, entitled Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing in the Art and Antiquities Market, and the $6.3 billion figure arises once again in paragraph 3 of the Introduction on page 5. The FATF burnishes that figure by stating that it is a UNODC estimate, which its own source (the 2011 report) shows is not true. In reality, it is a figure quoted by the UNODC from other uncertain and much older sources, as shown above.

So, a report by the FATF published in February 2023, aimed at influencing current international policy, quotes a highly dubious (at best) 12-year-old estimate based on much earlier estimates as the key statistic relating to global art crime to make its point.

Add to all of this the poorly funded and trained media’s failure to check sources as it takes officialdom at its word – and social media’s tendency to share their stories – and you have all the ingredients for the perfect global viral disinformation campaign.

It would be interesting to hear what Ed Butler and @timharford have to say about all this.

Remember, this is just one example of how unreliable claims and data have been reworked through multiple sources over the decades. As the Bogus Information about the Art Market document published by international trade federation CINOA shows, many other examples now blight official reports issued by authorities on a global scale.

Financial Action Task Force Report’s anti trade approach rings alarm bells

Financial Action Task Force Report’s anti trade approach rings alarm bells

Just released, the Financial Action Task Force’s new report, Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing in the Art and Antiquities Market, takes a highly irresponsible approach.

The FATF is an independent global body investigating crime whose reports should prove key to policy making. Not this one, however.

Arguably the most salient conclusion it comes to is as follows: “The markets for art, antiquities and other cultural objects are diverse in size, business models and geographic reach. Most are relatively small, and the vast majority of participants have no connection to illicit activity.”

However, this is buried deep in the text, while the FATF has focused on launching the report with a headline grabbing video that gives the clear impression that the art market is awash with criminals committing offences linked to money laundering and terrorism financing.

Needless to say, anti-market forces have leapt on this to condemn the trade and demand further legal restraints, while ignoring the lack of substance in the report or the fact that rigorous anti-money laundering laws already apply in the UK, for instance.

As with so many other reports of this ilk, fact checking has been a casualty. The most important initial independent statistic the report quotes as it launches into its arguments is wrong. In paragraph 3 of the Introduction Background on page 5, it notes that the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) “has estimated that in 2011, as much as USD 6.3 billion in illicit proceeds could have been laundered through or associated with the trade in cultural objects”. In fact, the figure, which was sourced from House of Commons Select Committee evidence in 2000 – now almost a quarter of a century ago – does nothing of the sort as CINOA’s Bogus Statistics report proves. FATF has simply taken UNODC’s word for it, thereby adding to the dissemination of fake news. This being the case, how reliable is the rest of the report?

The FATF’s work is important, so it is a shame that it, too, appears to have fallen into the trap of putting publicity before purpose in drawing attention to itself to justify its existence.

Further analysis of the report will follow.

W.C.O. data backs trade view of cultural heritage crime once again

W.C.O. data backs trade view of cultural heritage crime once again

The World Customs Organisation has finally published a new report following the 2019 report, covering two years from 2019-2021, probably delayed because of the Covid 19 pandemic. Its results once again show that global levels of illicit trade in cultural property are far lower than claimed.

In the press release we read: “This year, the analysis provided in this Report is based on data collected from 138 Member administrations. Previously composed of six sections, the Report now covers seven key areas of risk in the context of Customs enforcement: Anti-money laundering and terrorist financing; Cultural heritage; Drugs; Environment; IPR, health and safety; Revenue; and Security.”

It also states: “The analysis contained in this Report is mainly based on the collection of data from the WCO Customs Enforcement Network (CEN) — a database of worldwide Customs seizures and offences”….

“However, the CEN database relies heavily on voluntary submissions by Members hence the quantity and quality of the data submitted to the system has its limitations”…

“However, as part of this new methodology, the data and information sources used to elaborate this Report has been enlarged to include various open sources.”

While the rest of the report might be “mainly based on the collection of data from the WCO Customs Enforcement Network (CEN)”, in the introduction to the Cultural Heritage chapter on page 57, the WCO goes further, admitting: “Unfortunately, the data received through the WCO’s Customs Enforcement Network (CEN) in 2020-2021 being incomplete, the following analysis will be mostly based on open source information.”

Case studies based on media reports rather than primary research

The result for the Cultural Heritage section is that most of the case studies are based on newspaper articles, sometimes even on events that happened decades ago, and have nothing to do with recent trafficking activities. This is alarming as much of the problem with false data plaguing the cultural property sector stems from misreporting in the media. It is even more alarming when the misleading picture created by a surface reading of the chapter will undoubtedly be used as ‘evidence’ in future campaigns against the art market, as past reports have been.

The WCO is supposed to report recent and reliable figures, like figure 3 on page 35, showing that the number of worldwide reported cultural goods cases for 2021 is a mere 156, that is 1.1 case per reporting country….

A newly introduced graph (shown here) in the WCO report (Page 17, Fig. 4) reveals precisely what the ADA and its fellow association IADAA have reported over the past years: the illicit trade in cultural heritage is so small that it barely shows in the statistics. Not only is it the smallest category – so small that you have to look carefully in case you miss it – but the graph also shows that seizures have fallen by around 50% between 2019 and 2021.

Let’s not forget, too, that the Cultural Heritage category is not limited to antiquities, as so many mistakenly believe; it covers 13 distinct sub-categories, including: all forms of art, antiques and collectables, household items, flora and fauna, books and manuscripts. In 2019, the top three categories of recovered item sub-categories were: Fauna, Flora, Minerals, Anatomy & Fossils; Other; and Hand-painted or Hand-drawn articles and works of art. No mention of antiquities, which did not even warrant its own sub-category.

All of this begs the question as to why, in its chapter on Cultural Heritage, the WCO has chosen to focus exclusively on photographs of seized antiquities (at least one of which seems to be a fake) alongside fossils and coins. The choice appears politically charged.Consistent reporting of

The WCO has stated in the past and here that there is under-reporting of crime in the culture sector and that it only counts seizures and cases reported via the Customs Enforcement Network (CEN), the implication being that the problem is much larger.

Figures consistently show low rate of illicit trade in cultural property

However, the miniscule share of illicit trade represented in its reports over the years by cultural property has been consistent, only now augmented by media reports not sourced via the CEN.

It further boosts this chapter of the report with a summary of Pandora VI, the latest in a seven-year campaign of international operations involving mass seizures and arrests. What the WCO, Europol or Interpol have never done, however, is to provide data on how many of their seizures and arrests later prove to be justified and how many were shown to be related to terrorism financing. It is not just the trade asking for these figures, academic investigators want them too to see how effective these operations are.

Previously the WCO has attempted to rebut the ADA and IADAA’s analysis of its reports, stating that the figures cannot be relied on. As our analysis always provides transparent sources for the data emanating from the reports, however, the WCO’s case against our analysis simply does not stand up.

Ultimately, its figures must be indicative of the global state of affairs; if they are misleading, why publish them?

European Commission to target fake news. Here’s where it can start

Věra Jourová, vice-president of the European Commission for values and transparency, has decided to target fake news and disinformation. She calls it “potentially even more dangerous” than conventional weaponry.

Russia’s propaganda campaign surrounding its invasion of Ukraine has prompted this action, but it is also an excellent opportunity to address all of the fake news surrounding antiquities. Those guilty of promoting it include the media, governments, NGOs, campaign groups and even law enforcement.

Cultural property has become an important soft power diplomacy tool in recent years. The incentive for interest groups and individuals to spread false evidence and data as propaganda has grown substantially as a result. Equally corrosive has the been the failure to check the validity of claims. Lack of time and resources is at fault, but so is confirmation bias. If the claim fits your narrative, why bother to check whether it is true or not?

How to begin

Ironically, this applied to the European Commission’s own Fact Sheet, Questions and Answers on the illegal import of cultural goods to finance terrorism. Published on July 13, 2017, it set out the evidence on which the EC relied to press ahead with its import licensing proposals for cultural property and the art market. Researching the sources of its data and claims back to their original sources show clearly that they are groundless.

UNESCO’s 50th anniversary campaign, The Real Price of Art, and its bogus $10 million figure as the annual value of cultural property trafficking, have attracted extensive reporting in the media, but both are bogus and easily checked.

Many other questions arise over claims made by public bodies that should know better. The ADA and IADAA have exposed a large number of them for what they are. It is time that the authorities got a grip on this for the benefit of public confidence as well as better policy.

The Stargazer Judgment – Some key lessons

Martin Wilson is the former Chief General Counsel for Christie’s, the auction house at the centre of this case. Now as Chief General Counsel for Phillips, who do not trade in antiquities, his interest in the subject is academic. Here he shows a firm grasp of the relevant arguments at hand in a detailed article published on Linked In.

Wilson gives the back story to how Turkey ended up launching a legal claim for the return of the Guennol Stargazer, an Anatolian marble figure dating to around 3,000 BC. It also explains why Turkey lost its claim in the District Court. A lack of evidence to support its claim combined with its failure to act for years when it could have done so weakened Turkey’s case beyond hope here.

Arguably Wilson’s most important observation is as follows: “It is sometimes assumed that, because of the complex ethical, political and historical issues which surround them, cultural restitution claims are not subject to the same evidential requirements and rules of justice which apply to other claims or at least that these rules should be applied less rigidly. This ruling illustrates that this will not be the approach where the parties bring their dispute before the US Courts. It confirms that in common with any ordinary civil ownership dispute, a party claiming restitution must, if it hopes to prevail in a US court of law, be able to satisfy the evidential burden of proving the facts necessary to establish ownership in accordance with the requirements of the law.”

This may also explain why Italy has avoided going to court in its claim against Alan Safani.

Wilson notes the increasingly commonplace arguments used by source countries in their attempts to reclaim artefacts: “It is not uncommon for the parties on either side of the debate in cultural property restitution cases to assume bad faith and wrongdoing. The Turkish government followed a line of argument which is commonly used in cultural restitution cases – that an antiquity outside of its country of origin without evidence of how it came to leave that country should be treated by collectors as a red flag and that there is a presumption of illegal export or excavation which arises in such circumstances.”

Fortunately, although source countries’ attempts to reverse the burden of proof in this way may work under the terms of their Memoranda of Understanding with the United States, it is a different matter when these claims go to court, as this case shows.

Wilson also reminds us that statutes of limitation do count, although they are constantly overlooked.

Crucially, he concludes with some sound advice: “While the judgment does not say so, the outcome of the Stargazer case highlights the shortcomings of the debate over cultural property being expressed as a question of “ownership”.” Certainly, while source countries continue in their attempts to ride roughshod over individuals’ legal rights, no one will be satisfied.

WHAT REALLY HAPPENED OVER THE SEIZURE OF €11 MILLIon collection of Apulian artefacts?

WHAT REALLY HAPPENED OVER THE SEIZURE OF €11 MILLIon collection of Apulian artefacts?

When Eurojust announced that a Belgian collection of nearly 800 Apulian artefacts valued at €11 million had been seized and returned to Italy, it appeared to be a major victory for the Carabinieri and EU law enforcement.

However, dig deeper and all is not what it appears.

At the heart of this case is a stele, which has been part of this collection for decades. It had some missing features that matched fragments on display in a museum in Puglia. The implication? The stele must have been exported illegally: “The missing part enabled authorities to make a link to the artefact displayed during the expositions and led to the Belgian collector,” Eurojust explains.

What came next sounds dramatic: “At his premises, the investigators found the main part of the tombstone and were able to match this to the parts displayed in the Italian museum. During the investigations, a further vast collection of illegally excavated artefacts and pieces of pottery was found, dating to between 600 and 300 B.C..”

Establishing judicial co-operation between the Belgian and Italian authorities led to the entire collection later being shipped to Italy.

However, despite the claims, questions remain over what really happened.

A separate source has told IADAA that far from being shown to be illicit, the collection was shipped to Italy “for further research”, with claims that it was illicit and seized coming only after the shipment had taken place and without any evidence being provided to support the claim. The shipment included artefacts from Turkey, with no explanation as to why they were being seized by Italy.

As CNN reported, “the stele was listed in the catalogue for an exhibition held at the Rath Museum in Geneva, Switzerland, from November 1993 to February 1994, and an exhibition at the Mona-Bismarck Foundation Museum in Paris, France, from March 1 to April 30 1994.”

Applicable laws appear to have been ignored by the authorities

Article 7 of the European Union’s Regulation 93/7, which applied at the time, stipulated that Italy would have one year to file a claim for its return. It did not do so. Even under the updated Regulation 2014/60, which extended the claim period by three years, the current Italian claim is at least 25 years too late.

It is also odd that the authorities state that an investigation helped them identify the collector when the collection had been published and exhibited for decades. The collector had even published his name in association with it in the process.

Regardless of the stele itself, questions remain over other items in the collection. Most notably, the numerous black figure Attic vases have origins that are particularly difficult to establish, making it highly unlikely that any evidence exists to show that they were obtained or exported illegally.

Meanwhile the Art Newspaper’s coverage sheds some more light on what appears to have happened. According to its report, “782 items were identified in the collection that could be considered Italian national heritage, and as such had been exported illegally”.

“Could be considered”? And “as such”?

What this appears to reveal is that the collection – the owner is not a dealer despite the headline – has been deemed illicit because of its quality and importance, not on the grounds of illicit export.

Did the Art Newspaper correspondent ask the authorities what actual evidence they had that the collection was illicit? If so, what was it?

Italy’s first comprehensive cultural heritage law restricting exports (Law No 364/1909) came into force in 1909. Unless the Carabinieri, Eurojust and other law enforcement are in possession of evidence that the items in this collection were exported against the law after that date, the seizure would appear to have been made on no more than supposition. If so, a legitimate collector has been deprived of his long-held collection, valued by the authorities at €11 million, as a result of what would seem to be no more than nationalism and cultural piracy.

At the very least it would seem reasonable for the authorities to publish their evidence in such a significant case.

Due process must be protected: if the collection has been looted, then it has been rightly returned; if not, then significant reparations need to be made and a public investigation launched into how such a miscarriage of justice can not only take place but be promoted by the authorities in such a misleading way.