by ADA | Jan 30, 2024 | Uncategorized, Views
Sources quoted by authorities to clamp down on the art market rarely stand up to scrutiny
How does false data come to influence policy and even law making on such a widespread basis when it comes to cultural property?
One reason is confirmation bias: if the results of your research match what you hope to find, you are less likely to check their validity – a point made by statistics guru Dr Tim Harford when discussing claims made about antiquities and crime.
Another can be the authority of the source. This is very common in the cultural heritage sphere.
This two-part article analyses two studies from what should be an impeccable single source, showing how false data can spread from one official report to another to gain traction, and ultimately become an unchallenged authority among those who should know better.
They also demonstrate that many apparently learned pieces of research published by acknowledged authorities simply can’t be trusted, because it is clear that these professionals are not checking their sources adequately.
Both reports were published by the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime (UNODC).
One was titled PRACTICAL ASSISTANCE TOOL to assist in the implementation of the International Guidelines for Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice Responses with Respect to Trafficking in Cultural Property and Other Related Offences. It was published in 2016.
The two relevant claims it included were as follows:
• The Museums Association has estimated that profits from the illicit antiquities trade range for $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.
Footnotes indicated the source for each of these statements.
For the first it was “See Neil Brodie, Jenny Doole and Peter Watson, Stealing History: The Illicit Trade in Cultural Material (Cambridge, McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, 2000); and Simon Mackenzie, “Trafficking antiquities” in International Crime and Justice, Mangai Nataajan, ed. (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2011).”
For the second it was “United Kingdom, House of Commons, Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee, Cultural Property: Return and Illicit Trade, seventh report, vols. 1, 2 and 3 (London, 2000).”
These were very precise references, if rather out of date for a 2016 report by the UNODC.
The problem is that whoever researched the UNODC report failed to check where its quoted sources got their data from. If they had, they would have found the following:
– The Brodie, Doole and Watson report from 2000 did not refer to the Museums Association $225 million and $3 billion per year claim at all. Instead, on page 23 in the introduction to section 1.9, The Financial value of the illicit trade, it stated: “Geraldine Norman has estimated that the illicit trade in antiquities, world-wide, may be as much as $2 billion a year.” The footnote for this statement identified the source as journalist Geraldine Norman’s November 24, 1990, Independent article Great sale of the century. However, apart from the fact that the article was actually titled Great sale of the centuries, it included no such claim or figure.
The Simon Mackenzie chapter on Trafficking Antiquities is not open source data, but is available on subscription to CUP.
– In fact, the Museums Association did give estimated figures as part of its evidence to the UK House of Commons, Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee, Cultural Property: Return and Illicit Trade, seventh report, vols. 1, 2 and 3 (London, 2000) – the same source as the second claim quoted by the UNODC. In the Seventh Report, Chapter II The problem of illicit trade, The nature and scale of illicit trade, paragraph 9 reads: “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 gave as its source the Brodie, Doole and Watson 2000 report, quoted above, which in turn gave the Geraldine Norman article as the source, when, in fact, it provided no such figures.
So, the Museums Association’s actual claim was that “it is impossible to attach a firm financial value to the illicit trade in cultural material”, but that estimates worldwide [by others] varied greatly between £150 million and £2 billion.
This was rather different from the UNODC claim based on this source: “The Museums Association has estimated that profits from the illicit antiquities trade range for $225 million and $3 billion per year.”
To summarise, then, the £150 million to £2 billion claim ultimately came from nowhere. Its claimed primary source, the Geraldine Norman article from 1990, quoted no such figures. The secondary source which mistakenly quoted them was the Brodie, Doole & Watson report from ten years later in 2000, leading to the tertiary source of the Museums Association. In turn, this was quoted by the UNODC in 2016 – 26 years after the Norman article which gave no figures anyway. The UNODC report then became a new ‘primary’ source, with the figures quoted as UNODC estimates, which they weren’t at all.
See Part 2
by ADA | Jan 30, 2024 | Views |
Decades-old inaccurate figures used to promote tighter anti-money laundering policy
Of more immediate interest is an older UNODC report, Estimating Illicit Financial Flows Resulting from Drug Trafficking and Other Transnational Organized Crimes, from 2011. It is relevant now because in February 2023, the Financial Action Task Force report: Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing in the Art and Antiquities Market quoted it to support its analysis that money laundering risk was high. Now the European Union is using the FATF report to develop further AML policy.
On page 36 of the UNODC’s 2011 report, it gave a value range of $3.4 billion to $6.3 billion as the Global Financial Integrity (GFI) estimates of the global proceeds of crime for art and cultural property, based on information from Interpol and the International Scientific and Professional Advisory Council (ISPAC) of the UN Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice Programme.
The UNODC report stated that its Interpol and UN-related figures came from the February 2011 Global Financial Integrity (GFI) report, Transnational crime in the Developing World, and World Bank indicators (for current GDP).
Page 47 of the GFI report included a section headed Estimated Value of the Illicit Trade of Cultural Property, which began: “The actual value of the global illicit trade in cultural property is unknown and most experts are hesitant to estimate a value.”
Despite this, the UNODC provided an estimate range of $3.4-6.3 billion for the proceeds of transnational crime involving art and cultural property, citing the GFI report “based on Interpol, International Scientific and Professional Advisory Council of the United Nations Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice Programme”.
The remainder of that opening paragraph from the GFI report explained where this range of figures came from: “Estimates that do exist range in size from $300 million to $6 billion per year, with Interpol estimating $4 to $5 billion,and the International Scientific and Professional Advisory Council of the United Nations Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice Programme (ISPAC) estimating $6 to $8 billion. 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: Not stipulated, but almost certainly from the UK House of Commons, Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee, Cultural Property: Return and Illicit Trade, seventh report, vols. 1, 2 and 3 (London, 2000) (see Part 1 of this article), where they were quoted anecdotally by a Scotland Yard office whose colleague then provided evidence to refute them.
– $4 billion to $5 billion: Currently unavailable
– $6 billion to $8 billion: the 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.
UNODC Deputy Director John Sandage wrote the foreword to the published ISPAC paper from that 2008/9 programme. Its second paragraph read: “The value of international trade in looted, stolen or smuggled art is estimated at between US$4.5 billion to US$6 billion per year.”
Page 30 of the same report cited a figure of $7.8 billion from The 1999 United Nations Global Report, but it was wrong. In fact, the 1999 UN report quoted the range of $4.5 billion to $6 billion (see page 229), attributing it to a New York Times article of November 20, 1995, by Alan Riding titled Art theft is booming, bringing an effort to respond. Riding proved to be a dead end, giving no source beyond “experts”.
Meanwhile, Page 31 of the ISPAC report quoted a figure of £3 billion for London in the early 1990s according to Scotland Yard, and FBI figures of $5 billion and $6 billion for the whole art theft market for 2008.
In total then, the estimated $6 billion to $8 billion figures quoted by the UNODC in 2011 appear to come from a mix of sources, including the FBI and a non-existent rounded up figure from the 1999 United Nations Global Report. The FBI did not give a source for its figures, while the 1999 UN report gave a different range of figures, sourced from a 1995 New York Times article whose only source is unnamed experts.
As they refer to the “art theft market”, they clearly include all associated crime, such as commercial and domestic burglaries, with associated insurance losses – as can be seen from the evidence provided by Scotland Yard to the House of Commons in 2000 – and the ISPAC report confirmed that Interpol attributed the highest levels of cultural property theft to Italy and France.
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, whose own source (the 2011 report) shows that this is not true. In reality, it is a figure quoted by the UNODC from other uncertain and inaccurate sources, as shown above.
So, a report by the FATF published in February 2023, aimed at influencing current international policy – and now being used by the EU to tighten its anti-money laundering regulations further – quotes a 12-year-old set of figures based on guestimates and unattributed sources dating from the early 1990s to 2008. And it uses this as the key statistic relating to current global art crime to make its point.
As can be seen by the tortuous byways of out-of-date reports and newspaper articles dating back almost 35 years and quoting myriad figures that have contributed to this misleading picture, the truth can be lost very quickly. Nonetheless, the authority of the UNODC means these statistics are quoted as key evidence.
And this is just one example of how this is happening.
See Part 1
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