by ADA | Jan 21, 2026 | Views |
Lack of data, high costs, poor resources and risks to human rights continue to blight the mission to trace trafficked cultural property
Study on measures to increase traceability of cultural goods in the fight against cultural goods trafficking at the Member State level and at the EU level (Final report)
This report into what the European Commission believes should be done next to tackle the blight of cultural property trafficking is an eye-opener. It is telling that initial publication should take place just three months before the final enforcement of the previous mass enforcement measure, Reg 2019/880 on import licensing.
Nonetheless, this new report is fascinating because of what it reveals: specifically, the ongoing lack of data despite decades of study and multi-million euro funding for research; and high levels of self-awareness indicating an overwhelming lack of confidence in the viability of what is being proposed here. A continent-wide system linking up all existing databases (and adding new ones where needed) after they have adapted to a single standard could be a very effective means of combatting crime. However, as this 320-page report makes abundantly clear, too many obstacles persist to render this ambition anything but a fantasy.
Essentially the objective of the report is to pave the way for the introduction of a compulsory EU-wide registration and standardised due diligence system for reporting cultural property transactions. The idea is that this would allow national databases to interact with each other to create an EU-wide safety net and monitoring system.
EU-wide standardised network of databases
A continent-wide system linking up all existing databases (and adding new ones where needed) after they have adapted to a single standard could be a very effective means of combatting crime. However, as this 320-page paper makes abundantly clear, too many obstacles persist to render this ambition anything but a fantasy. Here are a few of the issues it raises:
– What would an effective single standard look like?
– Who would decide on what should be included?
– How do you define the parameters of what should be included on the databases?
– How do you get all Member States to comply when only nine of the 27 currently have databases and they are incompatible?
– What value threshold would you introduce if, as stated, the intention is to focus on high value goods (a wise course)? Matching the AML standard, as mooted, would mean €10,000, but that is very low and would risk overwhelming business, customs and possibly the databases themselves.
– Who would have access to the databases bearing in mind the historic protectionism exercised by existing databases? The report acknowledges that they would be ineffective if not publicly accessible.
– How do you persuade Member States to proceed when they have been unwilling so far and would largely have to fund the project themselves and set up support and enforcement teams? Initial estimated costs are €36.8 million, with an extra €383 million to link up Member States effectively.
– Why do we need further regulation when the same objectives are covered by existing measures such as EU Reg 2019/880 on import licensing?
– The report repeatedly emphasises the need for EU standards and human rights to be honoured, yet acknowledges just as repeatedly that what is being proposed risks breaching them.
As revealing is what comes in the preamble, where we discover the following:
– Data is hard to find and reliable data is largely non-existent, but art and antiques are seen as relatively high risk because they can be traded.
– Compliance value thresholds and claims of crime levels rely largely on guesswork.
– Law enforcement and others mostly extrapolate international crime levels from a few individual cases.
– Many of those cases involve art and criminals but not the art market.
– Risk categorisation for Terrorism Financing and Money Laundering are guesswork, with nation states acting on wish lists from law enforcement bodies and the belief that the risk must be high because it involves goods that can be traded.
Art Market input
As explained on page 277 of the report, apart from a few unspecified targeted interviews, consultation on this study with the art market was as follows:
An online survey targeting art market participants was launched in April 2024 and data was exported in July 2024. The survey aimed at gathering information about perceptions of the prevalence of trafficking, transaction recording practices and administrative costs and compliance costs incurred. A total of 32 replies were received from art dealers, galleries, auction houses, antique dealers and gallerists from Austria (1), Belgium (1), Czechia (1), Germany (11), France (2), Portugal (1), Sweden (6), Switzerland (1), the Netherlands (4) and the United Kingdom (3).
by ADA | Jan 5, 2026 | Views |
No questions asked; no curiosity – how the media deals with attacks on the art market
One of the most concerning aspects surrounding fake news as it applies to the subject of cultural heritage is the widespread failure of the media to address the issue properly.
While a daily stream of reports chide the international art market as a haven for criminals involved in theft, smuggling and money laundering, vanishingly few journalists ever seem to check the validity of claims being put out by governments, law enforcement, NGOs and others.
In 2022 and 2023, it appeared that we had turned a corner when European Commissioners and senior officials at UNESCO finally accepted that massively inflated claims regarding the value of illicit material being trafficked across the world were simply untrue.
One of the most important papers on the matter at the time was the Cambridge University Press published The illicit trade in antiquities is not the world’s third-largest illicit trade: a critical evaluation of a factoid. Its authors, Drs Neil Brodie and Donna Yates had long been critics of the trade, but had come to agree with the evidence-based arguments promoted by the industry that the claims were false and actually harmed the interests of heritage and culture because they risked encouraging further thefts.
Regulation that has the potential to harm legitimate trade has come into force on the back of false data promoted by those who wish to prevent that trade – the European Union’s new import licensing law 2019/880 is a case in point.
The false impression created by bilateral agreements
The rise of bilateral agreements, particularly between the United States and other countries (at least 35 now relating to cultural heritage) spreads a false impression that countries of origin are able to reclaim artefacts because US law enforcement is doing a great job of finding looted and trafficked pieces. The reality is that these agreements bypass the usual property rights cited under the US Constitution, as well as dispensing with the need for evidence, both of which would protect citizens under normal circumstances. Instead, they effectively wave through a kleptocratic system that allows the state to seize its people’s possessions and use them for soft-power purposes. Then the media, on a global basis, simply parrot the claims of the authorities rather than asking for evidence that the items in question were, indeed, illicit.
This is all bad enough, but the failure of the media to highlight the scandal, even when presented with the evidence, effectively makes it complicit. It’s almost as though reporters are simply reprinting the media releases from the Manhattan District Attorney’s office and the State Department. No questions asked; no curiosity.
The same unquestioning approach has made gospels out of official reports which simply do not stand up to scrutiny, such as the deeply flawed February 2023 Financial Action Task Force report into money laundering, trafficking and terrorism financing related to art, Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing in the Art and Antiquities Market.
It would be easy to blame the lack of training and resources for the media’s failure to examine these issues more robustly or even carry out basic fact checking. However, as all this has gone on, many leading media outlets have indeed taken a robust approach, but only where articles support the market position and expose the untruths leveled at it.
Articles supporting the market are ‘lost’ on submission
Antiquities Forum knows of numerous instances where articles pitched with every fact supported by detailed footnotes and/or embedded links to primary sources have been ‘lost’ by the commissioning editor – sometimes two or three times – with renewed submissions ultimately ignored or refused without reason. These are articles from expert writers and journalists who have had no problem securing publication with those same titles on other subjects.
At the same time, stories that are patently untrue or unsupported by evidence are published without question – clearly without any fact checking going on.
Comments under articles have been equally ‘mislaid’, ignored or simply censored if they challenge market critics. It seems no one in the media is interested in the widespread abuse of citizens’ rights, including the reversal of the burden of proof – now commonplace – when it comes to ownership, so that your property is considered stolen unless you have the paperwork to prove that it is not. Surely the media should be interested in something as fundamental as the decision to treat people as guilty rather than innocent as a basic standard of civilised society. But apparently not.
As a former member of the Cultural Property Advisory Committee (CPAC) that briefs Congress, lawyer Peter Tompa is a noted authority on the law as it applies to cultural heritage. A prominent campaigner among the coin collecting community, senior official of the Global Heritage Alliance and author of the Cultural Property Observer blog, as well as numerous articles in Cultural Property News, he is exactly the sort of expert that the media should be falling over themselves to interview, especially as he is hugely concerned with the attack on citizens’ rights. Instead, as he has just explained, he appears to have been blacklisted.
Market commentator blacklisted
Following a recent article in influential Washington publication The Hill by cultural property lawyer Rick Mr. St. Hilaire – no friend of the market over the years – Tompa found his own comments on the issue barred.
“The Hill Newspaper refused to publish this comment, supposedly because it violates their ‘community standards’,” he explained.
“Also, Mr. St. Hilaire disallows comments on his posts, except for people he is already connected with. So, here it is.” What Tompa explains, but The Hill did not, was that St Hilaire “is associated with an archaeological advocacy group that has received substantial State Department funding as a ‘soft power measure’”.
Among Tompa’s disallowed expert critique of St Hilaire’s comments was the following: “The major issue with his punitive approach is that it seeks to enforce confiscatory foreign laws here and assumes that even common items like historic coins purchased from legitimate markets in Europe are ‘stolen’ if they don’t have a long document trails proving ‘licit’ origins. Due process for American citizens should be the utmost consideration. Not using criminal law to threaten collectors on behalf of foreign governments, particularly authoritarian regimes in the Middle East which declare anything old State property.” Tompa goes on to explain how he then tried another version, complete with citations, but The Hill wouldn’t publish it, either.
“On reflection, perhaps that’s not all that surprising because The Hill has rejected other opinion pieces from me in the past (including the one quoted at the end that was ultimately published by the American Bar Association) and others representing collector interests. Meanwhile, the Antiquities Coalition and others with similar views seem to get what they want published in The Hill Newspaper. In any event, judge for yourself if this post violates ‘community standards’ or if it’s just another case where the views of collectors and the trade are being suppressed by a ‘woke’ press.”
And in a final challenge to The Hill, he adds: “If you are really interested in a conversation you will publish this comment. As archaeologists claim, context is important.”
Whatever the media’s reason for failing this challenge, from a journalistic perspective it makes no sense to duck what is really a sensational story of widespread collusion and apparent corruption at the heart of the State. Does no one want a Pulitzer Prize anymore?
by ADA | Nov 25, 2025 | Views |
Dispute shows that the ‘moral’ case is not always clear cut
Passed as part of the Charities Act 2022, measures that have been suspended relating to deaccessioning in museums and the return of objects to source countries will now come into force.
The idea is to make it easier for institutions to return disputed objects on moral grounds. This is not as easy as it might seem, however, as different moral codes apply depending on who and where you are.
Evidence of this can be seen in the Horniman Museum’s return of Benin Bronzes to Nigeria in 2021, under earlier legislation. While the moral grounds for sending the bronzes back were their status as looted items from the British punitive expedition of 1897, the museum ignored the fact that they were the product of slavery – literally so as they were made from slave currency – which had enriched the Oba of Benin.
As the BBC revealed on November 13, however, the bronzes that have been returned have sparked widespread controversy. This is firstly because the Nigerian government has handed them over to the current Oba, thereby rewarding the direct descendant of one of Africa’s worst slavers. The descendants of former slaves in the US had protested through the courts against the return of bronzes from The Smithsonian, but lost their case because, as the bronzes had already been returned, the court decided it lacked jurisdiction in the matter.
The Oba’s links to the history of slaving have been entirely expunged from the record in Nigeria and are largely overlooked by the world’s media and those who have pressed for repatriation, but that does not mean they have been forgotten.
New museum remains shut as Oba launches legal case
Now the bronzes’ new home, the much-anticipated Museum of West African Art (MOWAA) due to open in Benin, the capital of the Edo region of Nigeria, remains shut. Its construction and fitting out has taken five years, and the idea is for it to provide jobs and boost the local economy. Funded to the tune of $25 million by British Museum fund-raising donations, among others, it has found itself at the centre of a political storm for various reasons, with permission for the land to be used to build the museum now revoked.
“Much of it comes down to internecine rivalries at a local state level, as it was Edo’s previous governor Godwin Obaseki – whose term in office ended last year – who was a major backer of the museum,” the BBC reports.
“And it seems the administration of the new governor, a close ally of the local traditional ruler, known as the Oba, may want more of a stake in the project. The protesters on Sunday, for example, were demanding that the museum be placed under the control of Oba Ewuare II.”
True enough, as it turns out, according to the Benin media, which reported on November 24 that the Oba is attempting to wrest control of the returned artefacts and any fund-raising operations linked to them by suing the museum promoters and demanding that neither the museum nor anyone else should be dealing in Benin artefacts without his permission.
“According to available court documents, the claimant is contending among others, that the Oba of Benin, being the sole custodian of the culture, tradition and heritage of the Benin Kingdom, is the only rightful person to determine where the returned looted artefacts and other items of Benin heritage should be kept,” The Benin Sun reports.
The Oba is calling for the court to declare him the sole owner, custodian and manager of repatriated looted Benin artefacts.
He is also demanding that no one else – neither individual nor institution – should be able to raise funds from outside Nigeria in his name, and he wants a perpetual injunction “restraining the defendants, their servants, privies or agents from establishing, opening and operating any museum in Benin City, Edo State, dealing with Benin artefacts without the consent of the Oba of Benin”.
One rule for the governor, another for the Oba, when it comes to family connections
In May 2023, Cambridge University’s Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology delayed the return of 100 of the bronzes when it feared that they would not be put on public display after outgoing President Muhammadu Buhari decreed that the Oba was the rightful owner of all returned Benin Bronzes and was responsible for the management of all places where the artefacts were kept.
One of the curious aspects to the internal political disputes over the issue in Nigeria has been the objection to former Edo state governor Obaseki, who was behind the establishment of MOWAA. The objection rests on the fact that he is the direct descendant of a palace official who was appointed as prime minster by the British after the 1897 punitive expedition. If such a direct link would disqualify him from involvement, why is the same standard not applied to the Oba himself following his forebears’ bloody past?
Clues come from reporting on the Restitution Study Group, which has led the campaign to retain the bronzes in public institutions within the United States: one argument is that while the manilla slave currency was indeed used to make the bronzes, some of it came from trading other goods, so it is impossible to say which was which. Another is the view shared by Nigerian art historian Chika Okeke-Agulu, a professor at Princeton University and an activist at the forefront of the campaign to return looted artwork. He dismissed the Restitution Study Group’s leader, Ms Farmer-Paellmann’s comments as sounding “like the arguments that white folks who don’t want to return the artefacts have made”. Whether this is true or not, he does not address the historic Obas’ role in sending more than 100,000 people into slavery down the years.
What will the governments and museums around the world, so keen to hand back the bronzes for public benefit, do now?
- Image top: A Benin bronze, and (inset), a manilla, probably made from a brass composite (Ashmolean Museum). The name comes from manilha, the Portuguese word for a bracelet.
by ADA | Jun 26, 2025 | Views |
Supranational authority’s failure to join the European Convention of Human Rights – despite promising to 15 years ago – protects it from legal action by citizens unfairly suffering under import licensing law
Although every member state is a signatory to the European Convention on Human Rights, the European Union itself is not.
It committed to joining as long ago as 2010, but concerns arose that submitting itself to the ECHR might cause conflicts between the European Court of Justice and the European Court of Human Rights. Joining the ECHR would also lead to fundamental changes to EU powers.
Essentially, as an autonomous body, the EU would be ceding sovereignty to the ECHR, allowing individuals to challenge it legally over human rights in a way that they cannot do now.
While the EU remains committed to joining, 15 years after saying it would, the debate over resolving these conflicts continues.
This is important for those subjected to the EU import licensing regulation for Cultural Goods (2019/880), which comes into full force on June 28.
The fundamental driver for the legislation was the requirement to prevent illicit cultural goods that might have funded terrorism from entering the EU.
Finding evidence of this threat was essential to justifying the regulation under the terms of the European Commission President’s guiding principles for making policy. They stipulated that regulation had to be “targeted, easy to comply with and does not add unnecessary regulatory burdens… we must send a clear signal to citizens that our policies and proposals deliver and make life easier for people and for businesses.”
Ursula von der Leyen also ordered her commissioners to operate a policy of one-in-one-out so that “every legislative proposal creating new burdens” would “relieve people and businesses of an equivalent existing burden at EU level in the same policy area”.
“Proposals must be evidence based, widely consulted upon and subject to an impact assessment reviewed by the independent Regulatory Scrutiny Board. You will ensure that they respect the principles of proportionality and subsidiarity and show the clear benefit of European action.”
So, what happened here?
– No one-in-one-out. In fact, with additional anti-money laundering legislation, it has been at least two in and none out.
– No evidence of terrorism financing could be found, according to the two official reports (Deloitte and Ecorys) ordered by the European Commission.
– Data published by the European Commission to justify the regulation turned out to be wrong.
– The European Parliament concluded that the Impact Assessment conducted to see how the regulation would hit home lacked “sufficient and reliable background evidence” and “robustness and depth” in its analysis, and it dismissed it as “not always entirely convincing”.
– The Regulatory Scrutiny Board was highly critical of the regulation even as it passed it on the second review. Its recommendations were not followed up.
– Few dispute that the regulation will make life for citizens and businesses considerably harder.
Protocol 1. Article 1 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) protects the right to peaceful enjoyment of possessions, meaning everyone is entitled to own property and have it protected. This right isn’t absolute; it can be limited in certain situations, but any interference must be lawful, serve a legitimate public interest, and be proportionate.
Likewise, Article 17.2 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) states that “No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property”.
So, the ECHR recognises that such interference must be legitimately in the public interest and proportionate. The UDHR says interference must not be arbitrary. ‘Arbitrary’ here means without justification or in a way that is not proportionate.
Now, as the law was introduced to counter the threat of terrorism financing AND no evidence of such terrorism financing was found after extensive official and expert investigation, the measures brought in seem wildly disproportionate.
They:
– Do not make the lives citizens or businesses easier
– Do not honour the one-in-one-out principle
– Arguably breach human rights conventions to which all member states are signatories because they appear to be neither justified nor proportionate, and so could reasonably be termed arbitrary in their interference.
In addition, while they deprive ordinary citizens of fundamental human rights and blight honest business, they are unlikely to have any serious impact on crime, because this crime has not been identified as taking place in the EU, and criminals tend to smuggle illicit material, not submit it to customs. On top of that, other financial crimes such as fraud and money laundering are already addressed through alternative existing legislation.
The next few months will reveal just how damaging the new regulation is. Let’s just hope that dealers, auction houses, collectors and ordinary EU citizens can stay the course while this highly inadvisable experiment continues.
by ADA | May 16, 2025 | Views |
Sotheby’s proposed sale acts as a useful study in the dispute over rights between nations and individuals when it comes to cultural property
Much in the news has been Sotheby’s proposed (and then suspended) sale of the Piprahwa Gems, a collection of gem relic duplicates from the Stupa found in 1898 on the estate of William Claxton Peppé close to the border of Nepal in North East India.
The story of their discovery and what happened afterwards is well documented: a reliquary urn found inside a stupa contained ash, some bone fragments, gold and gems.
But it was the inscription on the urn that caused the greatest excitement as it was interpreted to mean that the bone relics were the remains of the Buddha given to his own Shakya clan after his cremation.
Under the Indian Treasure Trove Act 1878, The British Crown claimed the find before dispersing it as follows: the bone relics were presented as a gift to King Rama V of Siam, while all the major pieces of gold and gems were donated to the museum in Kolkata. The remaining minor portion of duplicate gems was returned to the Peppé family.
Passing by descent in the family over the next century and more, they ended up in the hands of Chris Peppé and his two cousins in 2013. They conducted a great deal of research into their history and decided to put them on public display: “From the time we received the Piprahwa gem relics, my cousins and I have sought to make them available for viewing by the public (ideally a Buddhist public) to see at no cost to the institution borrowing them,” he says in Sotheby’s preview for the sale.
This led to six years of exhibitions around the world “from the Museum Rietberg in Zurich, the Rubin Museum of Himalayan Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York to the Asian Civilisations Museum in Singapore and the National Museum of Korea in Seoul”.
They also set up a website dedicated to the gems, giving access to all their research materials.
The outcry arose when the Peppés decided to sell
The problem came when they decided to sell them.
Suddenly the Indian government stepped in to say that the sale was unlawful, against international conventions, unethical, and that the gems should be repatriated. The Indian Ministry confused the issue by adding the colonial exploitation argument to the claim. Was its demand based on law, ethics or morals?
The Guardian quoted the ministry as saying that the gem relics “constitute inalienable religious and cultural heritage of India and the global Buddhist community” and that they were “sacred grave goods … inseparable from the sacred relics and cannot be commodified”.
Is the Indian government right? Several other questions need answering first.
There appears to be no dispute over ownership. The Indian Treasure Trove Act 1878 applied at the time of discovery and, clearly, the find was reported because of the Crown’s subsequent claim and what came after, including the return of a part of the find to the Peppé family.
Is India trying to do what so many other countries have been doing: insisting that the world honours laws introduced long after the fact so that they have retroactive tenure?
Legal opinion in a Financial Times article on the issue points to this.
Of vital importance – and not yet divulged via the media – is when the Piprahwa gems left India. If it was before current relevant legislation passed into law, then it may be reasonable to assume that they left legally. If not, then regardless of who owns them, they would have been exported illegally if a licence was not issued.
If we assume that the gems left India before 1972 (when India’s Antiquities and Art Treasures Act came into force) and did not need an export licence prior to that, then it is difficult to see how Indian law would apply, unless other relevant legislation existed at the time that has not come to light.
The Indian government may be outraged, but is it right?
If the contents of the urn did indeed include the remains of the Buddha, then a strong moral case for their return might be argued, but while some scholars have interpreted the inscription on the urn to mean this, the facts are far from certain.
The Indian government’s outrage might be understandable, but that does not mean its rights are being transgressed here, and if the gems were legally exported, it would appear to have no legal claim.
Without stipulating exactly which laws and conventions it argues would apply to the case, the ‘moral’ and ‘ethical’ elements appear to be little more than an attempt at emotional blackmail. Such emotional outbursts often act as cover for a poor argument, or lack of evidence. Effectively they want to inflict a substantial loss on a third party, with no costs to themselves, in pursuit of an asset grab, and to do so without damaging their own reputation.
This sort of attitude and behaviour is far too common these days and is exacerbated by the questionable practice of international relations using cultural property as a soft power diplomacy tool through vehicles such as bilateral agreements, also known as Memoranda of Understanding. These allow countries to bypass the norms of evidence, as well as international conventions such as UNESCO, to get what they want. It is exactly this arrangement that gives retroactive power to current national policy in making historic claims. If anything is unethical, it is this policy, but cross cultural misunderstanding means that this sort of approach may well be seen as perfectly acceptable in countries with little or no tradition of democracy or individual rights.
UNESCO’s 1970 Convention on illicit trade in cultural property is extremely important because it sets out to avoid these situations by balancing conflicting interests between nations and individuals with valid rights.
The 1970 UNESCO Convention is the key to resolving the conflict
India ratified the UNESCO Convention in January 1977, and so should stand by its principles and articles. Under Article 5 (b), these include “establishing and keeping up to date, on the basis of a national inventory of protected property, a list of important public and private cultural property whose export would constitute an appreciable impoverishment of the national cultural heritage”.
While proposing lists of buildings and sites for UNESCO recognition, India – along with all other States Parties to the Convention – has failed to produce such an inventory, despite having had almost 50 years to do so. Why not if this issue is so important?
If the gems are as inalienable as the Indian government claims, then they would surely have made such a list. Why has India been so lax in publishing it?
If the Peppés are the rightful owners of the gems and exported them from India legally, and India really wants the gems back, then it should honour its commitments under Article 7 (ii) of the UNESCO Convention by agreeing to pay fair and just compensation for them to the owners. It will also need (at its own expense) to provide the documentation and other evidence necessary to establish its claim for recovery and return, and cover all ensuing costs associated with the return. At Sotheby’s estimate of HK$100m (£9.7m/US$13m), this would be a good test to see just how important the gems really are to it and would also leave all parties to the dispute satisfied.
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