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.
by ADA | Mar 31, 2025 | News, Uncategorized |
Despite myriad figures for illicit trade worth billions or even tens of billions of dollars, no one can point to any reliable source for claims
A survey of a dozen of the world’s top law enforcement agencies and government departments has revealed that none of them appears to have any accurate data regarding the value of cultural goods trafficking globally.
This is despite multiple claims going back years of an illicit trade worth tens of billions of dollars.
Indeed, in at least one case – Interpol – the only reference to the size of the problem comes in a ten-year-old video still prominent on its website, in which former Secretary General Jürgen Stock makes the claim that the black market in art is as lucrative as the illicit markets in drugs, weapons and counterfeit goods – a claim long since exposed as untrue.
Carried out on behalf of several art market trade associations, the survey sought responses from the European Commission, the EU Directorate for Culture, the European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF), the US State Department, Interpol, Europol, the FBI, Homeland Security, the Financial Action Task Force, the UK’s National Crime Agency, the World Customs Organisation and UNESCO.
Care was made to approach the correct source for such information in each case, and follow-up requests were made when advised by the relevant authority of a different source.
The aim was to get a clear picture of trafficking levels
The aim of the survey was to establish a clear picture of global trafficking data for cultural property.
“It is important to establish credible data to defeat the extensive misinformation and disinformation surrounding this subject, which plays a significant part in hampering effective policy making,” the authorities were told.
Each was asked the following: “Do you have any independently verifiable figures relating to the value of trafficking of cultural property, especially any global figures for the annual value of this risk area?”
And each was asked to supply the data and its sources if it was available. Not one did. More than one admitted that it didn’t have the information or that it simply did not exist. These included organisations producing extensive reports claiming cultural goods trafficking is a huge problem.
Others either did not respond or directed the request to another source. In one case, the UK’s National Crime Agency, the request was met with refusal to respond on the grounds that it was not a public body.
No relevant data from Interpol or Europol
Despite mass data being made available for associated issues and other categories of risk via the World Customs Organisation annual Illicit Trade Reports, together with arrests and seizure data from Interpol and Europol via Operations such Pandora, not one authority was able to provide any credible data on the size of cultural goods trafficking.
Having previously stated on its website that it had no data showing the size of the problem and adding that it never expected to have any reliable data on global trafficking in cultural property, Interpol says it is a “lucrative black market” and introduces its Cultural Heritage Crime section as follows: “Trafficking in cultural property is a low-risk, high-profit business for criminals with links to organized crime. From stolen artwork to historical artefacts, this crime can affect all countries, either as origin, transit or destinations.”
Requests to both Europol and the World Customs Organisation have proved equally fruitless.
Europol directed the request to its website, which gives no such data. However, it had responded to an earlier request, stating: “We do not have these figures. Europol is not a statistical organisation – Europol’s priority is to support cross-border investigations and the information available is solely based on investigations supported by Europol.”
Europol has since confirmed that it does not have the relevant data.
When emailed in February, asking why it no longer included any relevant data in its annual Illicit Trade Report on Cultural Goods, The WCO explained that global data on illicit trade “does not exist”.
When emailed again in March, it did not respond.
No relevant data available from Eurostat
The European Commission’s information service directed the request to Eurostat, but that does not have any relevant data.
The Financial Action Task Force directed the request to its 2023 report: Money Laundering and terrorist Financing in the Art and Antiquities Market. However, much of that report is based on historically inaccurate data and provides no credible figures for global trafficking at all. It also acknowledges that it does not have the data, stating on page 28: “The lack of reliable statistics concerning looting activities, especially from conflict zones, makes it difficult to assess the scale of the phenomenon. However, taking into account the volume of looted archaeological goods seized in certain international or national police operations, it appears that this is a large-scale activity.” This view does not tally with the global data published by the World Customs Organisation.
The US State Department directed the request to the Office of Civilian Security, Democracy, and Human Rights, providing two phone numbers. One had a voicemail, so a request was left for an email address, with no result; the other number did not work. The weblink provided by the State department gave no information on the ‘Office’. Extensive web searching came up with no contact details. No further response came.
A March 12 response from the FBI referred the request to an online request form, which was filled in the same day. To date, no further response has arisen.
No relevant data from the European Anti-Fraud Office
A follow-up request elicited a response from the European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF). It welcomed the attempt to gather credible data but said its work did not relate directly to doing so itself.
No responses came at all from the Directorate-General for Education, Youth, Sport and Culture (DG EAC) (Cultural Heritage Unit); UNESCO’s Information Service (for all UNESCO data); or Homeland Security.
Readers will have their own views as to what this means, but the complete lack of any reliable data – or any data at all in most cases – raises the question as to what the unending slew of claims over global trafficking in cultural property are really based on.
A more detailed summary of individual responses is available.
- This article will be updated by any further responses of note.
by ADA | Feb 25, 2025 | Views |
The World Customs Organisation (WCO) finally seems to have all but given up when it comes to an accurate and detailed analysis of trafficking and the art market, if its 2022 and 2023 Illicit Trade Reports are anything to go by. Several wild claims of trafficking worth billions when it comes to Cultural Goods are not only unsupported by evidence or any reliable sources – they even contradict each other.
Added to this is the WCO’s insistence on the art market being a haven for money laundering while quoting reports that say the opposite. Even its most important anti-money laundering initiative, Project Tentacle, demonstrates that the art market has little to do with what is going in this sphere of crime.
Most intriguing of all is that while it claims a 15% uptick in Cultural Goods trafficking in 2023, it produces no statistics whatsoever to demonstrate this. Also, unusually, no graphs, graphics or tables are included to demonstrate the problem despite many appearing for every other risk category covered in the 250-page plus report.
Almost a data-free zone
When it comes to Cultural Goods, the report is almost a data-free zone.
As the introduction on page 11 tells us, data for the 2023 WCO report comes chiefly from the Customs Enforcement Network (CEN), but this is supplemented by other sources: official government media outlets; international organisations; member surveys and open-source analysis. While these might be helpful, they also increase the risk of misinformation and propaganda. As the Antiquities Forum has discovered on numerous occasions, official reports are not necessarily robust when it comes to the reliability of their data.
Seizures under Project Tentacle, carried out in partnership with Interpol and the Financial Intelligence Units across multiple countries, amounted to $22 million worth of gemstones, currency and precious metals in 2023. The WCO details seizures in this area as follows:
Gold: 116 seizures – 266.3 kilos of golds bars, 153 gold coins and 122 pieces of jewellery
Currency: 153 seizures – US$3.36 million
Wildlife: 1 seizure – 69 Toucans and Macaws
Trade-Based Money Laundering: 1 case connected to high-duty consumer goods and alcohol
Watches: 29 including 4 Rolexes
Meanwhile, Ukraine understandably dominates reporting when it comes to Cultural Goods trafficking.
Of all the statistics published, the WCO’s priority list is perhaps the most interesting. It categorises each of the 11 risk categories for its priority status among WCO members: Essential, High, Moderate, Neutral, Somewhat, Low and Not a Priority. It presents an average priority score for each category, the highest being 5.06 for drugs, and the lowest 3.41 for Cultural Goods.
Despite this, the WCO claims that the annual global value of trafficked cultural goods is in the tens of billions of euros. It gives no source for this but seems to be confusing the figure with the value of the legitimate global art market in 2023, which it puts at $65 billion, using the Art Basel Report as a source.
The tens of billions claim also clashes with another claim, which reiterates the long debunked figure of $6 billion reported in the 2016 UNODC report as the value of the global “underground market” in cultural goods.
“As we will see below, the market has naturally attracted criminals, organized crime groups, and terrorists who seek to launder proceeds of crime and fund their activities,” the introduction to this section states – a claim not held up by what follows at all, especially as it immediately excuses the “low figures” for seized Cultural Goods as under reporting by WCO members as they have other priorities. The report says that although reported seizures of Cultural Goods are low, they have been “consistently trending upwards since 2019”, with a 15% increase year on year in 2023. What the actual figures are, we are not told.
The WCO quotes the IMF and the Financial Action Task Force (FATF February 2023 report) in damning the art market as a higher risk sector for money laundering than other sectors, even though studies such as the US Treasury Report of 2022 concluded it to be lower risk. The FATF report, a seriously flawed and heavily redacted piece of work, largely used case studies that, while involving art, did not involve the art market. In fact, the FATF report acknowledged that the art market was not attractive to money launderers, is regulated by AML laws as well as self-imposed compliance and “In addition, a large part of the transactions carried out in the sector are routed through the banking system, which generally has mature and long-standing AML/CFT controls.”
Ramping up the anti-market rhetoric
The WCO ramps up the rhetoric against the art market by quoting the case of Lebanon-based Nazem Said Ahmad, a man with suspected linked to Hezbollah, whose property was seized from storage near Heathrow in London in 2019 and became the subject of a major investigation. The WCO puts a value of $160 million on the seizures although the figure reported at the time was $1.3 million. How much this case had to do with the art market is unclear. Certainly at least one auction house, Phillips, was involved, but had frozen Ahmad’s artworks and banned him from doing business with them in 2019. The WCO does not name the nine co-conspirators who were charged in 2023, nor whether any of them were part of the art market.
In none of the limited number of cases of cultural goods trafficked from Ukraine mentioned in this report does the WCO mention any links to the art market.
This 2023 WCO Illicit Trade Report comes across as little more than a piece of anti-market propaganda. The failure to publish any hard statistics other than those that are wrong or have no source displays a degree of cynicism, while conflicting bogus claims as to the size of trafficking – $6 billion or tens of billions of dollars – show a lack of care or incompetence that simply undermines the WCO’s credibility.
Yet again, we are faced with an authority that appears to have a pre-set political agenda when it comes to the art market, making claims it cannot support with evidence, then acknowledging that the evidence isn’t there, then excusing this shortcoming by blaming ‘under reporting’. As figures from previous years have shown – and the pie charts of 2019 figures shown above demonstrate – by a very long way Cultural Goods make up the smallest contribution to trafficking by every measure. This is not just true for the number of cases and seizures, but also for the volume and value of items seized of any risk category. In the decade or so since such figures have been reported, this has always been the case, and this fact is supported by every other study published into the subject.
We have written to the WCO asking for the source of its figures and challenging its position on Cultural Goods, and it has informed us that the officer in charge of drafting this section of the illicit trade report no longer works for the WCO. The WCO also says that as the CEN is built for analysts, not statistics, the global data on illicit trade does not exist. If so, how can the WCO quote figures of “tens of billions of dollars” or “$6 billion”? And what about the 15% uptick claimed? This is clearly no more than gossip or guesswork, neither of which has any place in such a potentially influential report. We have now asked the WCO not publish data without giving its primary source, and for them to check that source to ensure it is accurate.
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