Academic and cultural institutions, as well as governments, continue to look down on the art market – it’s unfair and is in no one’s interest
Provenance and Due Diligence have become the critical factors in assessing cultural goods in recent years. Theft, trafficking, unethical acquisition in colonial times, suspected links to money laundering and terrorism financing have all been presented as arguments for tighter controls and reversing the burden of proof so that items and people are deemed ‘guilty’ unless they can demonstrate their innocence.
The ardent pursuit of this ‘solution’ has brought its own problems: an embarrassing dearth of reliable evidence – hence the reversal of the burden of proof (initially under UNIDROIT 1995) – false data and fake news, failure to check facts and sources, overreach that risks breaching human rights and brings other ethical issues. The exploitation of the cultural sphere for soft power diplomacy includes further exploitation by those who wish to harness it for financial gain or political influence. State-backed programmes and institutional interests are where the real power lies: funding and ‘capacity building’ the self-interests at its core.
This is the environment in which the international art market finds itself the useful whipping boy of those who wish to justify their actions and budgets.
For many on the institutional side of the argument, however, the market really is the problem; they see themselves as being in conflict with – and better than – the trade, while positive actions on the part of the market are deemed merely incidental.
A conversation on…Provenance Research and Due Diligence in the Art and Antiquities World: Distinctions, Connections, Synergies, Challenges, held online on April 8 as part of the International Art Market Studies Association Law & the Arts course 2025–2026, attracted more than 140 attendees.
It addressed the increasing relevance of provenance research and the reasons for this, from the social responsibility of institutions, via the Washington Principles relating to Nazi-looted art to a wider moral responsibility to society and history.
Defining the difference between due diligence and provenance research
Attempts to define the difference between provenance research and due diligence were most usefully summarised as the following: due diligence is the checking of provenance to the extent of what a reasonable person should be expected to carry out related to a specific event, such as a sale or acquisition, whereas provenance research is a wider, ongoing investigation into the history, origins and circumstances of an object.
A higher standard of diligence should be expected from art market professionals as they have more knowledge of objects, it was argued. Presumably such a standard would also apply to museum experts for the same reason, but this was not mentioned.
An overwhelming number of attendees to the session work in the public or academic sphere, as curators, provenance researchers attached to institutions or as officials linked to museum organisations. This resulted in a largely uniform perception and opinion.
Despite this being a course staged by the Art Market Studies Association, art market representatives were extremely thin on the ground. None were included as speakers.
This is a chronic issue with much of the debate over ethics, standards and the law relating to the market. A good example came early on, when Sofia Bollo of the Ethnographic museum at the University of Zurich, who also serves on the Chair of the ICOM Italian section, discussed the working group on provenance research at ICOM. Set up in 2023, it includes more than 100 members: anthropologists, archaeologists, art historians, unemployed people, museum and research interest – but apparently no one from the international art market. This means that we have a body proposing a set of stringent rules for a market that it has not consulted and about which it has a limited understanding. While this may be fine for setting common standards among institutions such as museums, it is unfortunate when it is quite clear that for any measures to be effective in the market, they must address the market from a practical standpoint.
A useful summary of post Second World War initiatives addressing ethics and behaviour covered UNESCO (1970), UNIDROIT (1995), and various EU Directives. As market professionals have found, however, States Parties to the UNESCO Convention tend to cherry pick the articles that suit them, which means that most, if not all, have yet to submit essential lists of goods of national importance, and few are keen to offer the compensation they are committed to when reclaiming items from honest purchasers.
This trampling of a long-established moral right by a new and questionable ‘ethical’ standard is the whole cultural heritage debate in microcosm.
Bilateral agreements and the creeping recognition of domestic laws internationally (not all of them reasonable, notably US vs McClain – 1977) is increasingly creating a situation where honest owners are deprived of the valid title to their belongings. This trampling of a long-established moral right by a new and questionable ‘ethical’ standard is the whole cultural heritage debate in microcosm.
The Australian academic and specialist in cultural heritage law, Lyndel Prott, argued for ‘required diligence’ rather than ‘due diligence’, but that would also require very clear, globally adopted parameters that have yet to be defined. She took a realistic approach to historical norms, acknowledging that provenance standards today could not be applied retroactively to purchases of decades ago.
Alyssa Thiel, of the Penn Cultural Heritage Center, one of several attendees who have worked in the Manhattan District Attorney’s Antiquities Trafficking Unit (ATU), also considered historic norms. She noted the pressure on museums to acquire the best pieces at a time when their context was seen as more important than their history of ownership.
An enlightened approach, it is not shared by the head of the ATU, Assistant District Attorney Matthew Bogdanos, who has seized many such items.
Prott also argued that private sellers were now more of a problem than market professionals because the latter were subject to greater regulation, including anti-money laundering laws, and many have professional compliance departments.
It is almost as though anyone outside the market refuses to believe that market professionals can act with anything other than dishonest or dishonourable intent.
Absent from the debate, however, was any recognition that just as museums and other institutions don’t want to find themselves handling illicit material, neither do auction houses or dealers – and for the same reasons. It is almost as though anyone outside the market refuses to believe that market professionals can act with anything other than dishonest or dishonourable intent.
The webinar also set out the list of checks that should be undertaken when carrying out due diligence, from checking stolen art databases and ICOM red lists to requiring sellers to provide written evidence and supporting paperwork or, in their absence, a notarised statement. While much of this is already the norm, how much would it cost to pursue all the avenues set out and how long would it take? If such checks are essential for all transactions, how much of the market would survive for lesser, cheaper objects?
As Daniel Healey, a Provenance Research specialist at Worcester Art Museum, Massachusetts (and another former ATU staffer) noted, the work of provenance research can become very expensive for museums – sometimes they have to travel to check sources. It is a challenge to museums to fund such provenance research and it requires ongoing support, he advised. They have to rely a lot on colleagues in other institutions.
Again, attendees seemed to apply a double standard here: while Healey complained of the lack of time and resources facing museum curators as they tried to assess items coming up for auction – and blamed auction houses for this – no one considered that auction house specialists themselves, and dealers, faced the same challenges. Why should special consideration be given to one set of professionals but not the other?
Export certificates were another consideration. Now vital under the EU import licensing regulations, the fact that they rarely survive in any useful form continues to be overlooked.
Despite this, the UNIDROIT working group on cultural objects with significant gaps in provenance (usually known as Orphan objects) has been able to make some sensible contributions. Due Diligence is not just about compliance, it’s also about reducing costly mistakes and sustaining public trust.
France is attempting to standardise provenance research
A move in France to nationalise how provenance research is carried out includes a mandatory eight-page provenance form for any public acquisition that is already in place. How would this apply to the market? Who would pay for the compliance? Again, no consideration of the practicalities. Nonetheless, as with every forum of this type, a common complaint was the lack of resources and funding to support their work. Yet no one considers that market professionals face identical issues.
Engaging with the art market is an oft-quoted objective to justify what are usually predictable anti-market outcomes of projects and research. In practice, however, such ‘engagement’ is ignored, ineffectual or simply a fig leaf to cover an ideological approach. Until those in the public sector, together with those in the private institutional sector, recognise that the market faces identical challenges to them, it will be hard to move forward. You cannot expect to apply impossible rules to others while giving a free pass to yourself in the same context.
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?
Artificial Intelligence is undoubtedly useful, especially when carrying out research, but it is also a minefield of fake news if you don’t do your homework properly.
As an example, take a report inspired by the recent dramatic theft of Royal jewels from The Louvre and published by Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime. Titled Lessons from The Louvre, it includes the following statement: “Organized crime groups are increasingly targeting art and antiquities held in European collections, drawn by the continent’s cultural repositories and art markets.”
Whether this claim is true or not, the article provides no supporting evidence. It does mention a series of crimes that have taken place within Europe in recent years that may have been – even probably were – carried out by criminal gangs. Two of those mentioned even involved antiquities, although the rest did not. What they do not prove in any way is the veracity of the statement about such crimes being on the increase in Europe.
Now comes the A.I. part.
As an experiment, the Antiquities Forum asked A.I. the following question: “Is it true that organized crime groups are increasingly targeting art and antiquities held in European collections, drawn by the continent’s cultural repositories and art markets?”
The response was unequivocal: “Yes, organized crime groups are increasingly targeting art and antiquities held in European collections. The continent is a key hub for the illicit trade due to its wealth of cultural artifacts and active art markets, which organized criminals exploit for profit and other illicit purpose.”
It then provided a series of paragraphs under the heading Key reasons for the increase.
This all looked very convincing until further investigation showed that the conclusions were based entirely on sources including the article mentioned above, where significant claims had been made but without giving the evidence to show they were true.
Checking out the sources
In fact, in the case of the headline claim about organized criminals increasingly targeting European collections, the top three sources quoted were:
Further sources include a 2022 European Union Action Plan against Trafficking in Culture Goods. Its claims that trafficking is a ‘lucrative’ business and that “increasing global demand from collectors, investors and museums” is driving looting and trafficking are based on the existence of UN Security Council resolutions, the size of the legitimate art market and estimates by Europol.
The problem here is that UN Security Council resolutions are preventive measures based on perceived risk rather than on evidence of actual crime; the size of the legitimate art market (which has been shrinking in recent years, not growing) sheds no light at all on crime levels, let alone showing that they are rising; and, at its own admission, Europol has no data to support the claim made on its behalf, despite all the headline figures on arrests and seizures (but not convictions or confirmation of the goods being illicit) relating to Operation Pandora and the rest.
In other words, as is almost always the case with such claims from the EU, they are not based on facts, but on supposition.
How the claims just don’t stack up
It’s a similar tale with Interpol, whose Cultural Heritage Crime page also features as an A.I. source in this context. There Interpol’s significant (but unsupported) claim is: “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.”
In fact, not one of the sources given by A.I. to support the robust (but misleading) conclusions it comes to stand up to scrutiny.
Unfortunately, as reports from many sources have shown, researchers looking for confirmation of their suspicions when it comes to the international art market often fall victim to confirmation bias, failing to check the sources they cite through footnotes and embedded links because on the surface they seem to support what they believe.
Because of this, it has been surprisingly easy to debunk long accepted, but false, claims about the art market. And it also explains why the Antiquities Dealers’ Association (ADA) and the International Association of Dealers in Ancient Art (IADAA), who between them support the work of the Antiquities Forum, for years have operated a policy of checking primary sources for claims wherever possible.They provide those sources wherever possible in promoting their own views and arguments, and ask their audiences to check the sources given for their own satisfaction. Unfortunately, this is a highly sensitive and controversial arena where no one – no matter who they are – can simply be taken at their word. And A.I. is not going to fix that any time soon.
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.
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.
•The false claim that illicit trade in cultural property is third only to that in drugs and weapons
So many conflicting claims have been made about Interpol’s art crime figures, including the looting and trafficking of antiquities, that it is difficult to know what to believe these days.
Part of the problem was that for years Interpol published conflicting claims on the Art Crime home page of its website, as the screenshots here show:
Headlining was the claim that “The black market in works of art is becoming as lucrative as those for drugs, weapons and counterfeit goods”. Earlier claims by Interpol valued the global illicit market in cultural property at around $4 billion to $5 billion annually.
This has never been true, and recent figures in the World Customs Organisation’s annual Illicit Trade Reports demonstrate this clearly. In fact, cultural property crime, which includes categories such as household goods is, by a very long way indeed, the smallest risk category.
The admission that Interpol has never had any figures to demonstrate its headline claim, nor is ever likely to obtain such figures, appeared in a click-through section lower down on the same page (see above).
Unfortunately, bodies such as the European Commission, the Carabinieri and UNESCO have promoted the headline claim while ignoring the admission lower down, leading to the widespread dissemination of what amounted to a false claim. This matters because the false claim has directly influenced new policy and further restrictions on the art market.
Fortunately, after having the discrepancy pointed out to it for several years, Interpol finally removed the conflicting claims from its website in March 2019. However, the headline claim’s pervasiveness, in what amounted to a long-term viral online campaign against the art market, means that it is still widely quoted and believed to this day.
Transnational operations (Operation Pandora etc)
For the past decade and more Interpol has co-ordinated with Europol and national police forces in dozens of countries on an annual basis to mount operations aimed at stemming the flow of illicit cultural property that might be involved in money laundering and terrorism financing.
With names such as Odysseus, Athena and Pandora, these huge operations target individuals, households, business and transport. The resulting media releases enumerate vast numbers of seizures, as well as arrests, while also providing examples, including photographs of important items that have been seized.
While this all looks impressive, what neither Interpol nor Europol have ever done is to follow these data up with the crucial information about how many of these seized items later turned out to be illicit and linked to money laundering or terrorism financing. Nor do they ever publish conviction rates for those arrested.
The ADA and IADAA have twice asked Europol for these figures.
The first occasion was in February 2017, when Europol told us: “As your questions are very detailed and some are focused on particular countries, I suggest you get in contact with the countries involved. We can only communicate on a general level and don’t hold all the details of the different participating countries.”
The second occasion was in May 2023, when Europol told us: “Unfortunately, we won’t be able to help as 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.”
Interpol has published numerous media releases on the same subjects and has included operational results in separate reports, including its 2020 report, Assessing Crimes Against Cultural Property.
This included data on Operation Pandora V, which took place across 32 countries and resulted in more than 56,400 cultural goods being seized and 67 arrests. 27,300 of the items seized came in a single haul in France where Customs officers arrested a man who had been illegally digging up archaeological pieces.
The leading publicised highlight from the operation was a set of three gold coins that “could have been worth up to €200,000 on the black market”, which were recovered after the arrest of two men in Spain.
Data in the Interpol report relating to global crime referred to arrests, but shed no light on convictions or how much of what was seized later proved to be illicit. No mention of terrorism financing was made.
Page 14 of the report revealed that of the 567,465 items seized in Europe, 83% (or 472,933) were library materials. This single category of library items accounted for 55% of the global total of 854,742 objects seized for the whole of 2020.
Ongoing issues
Despite supposedly cleaning up its act with the 2019 relaunch of its website, Interpol has continued to promote false and unsubstantiated claims.
In the introduction to its 2021 report it stated: “The illicit trafficking of cultural property is a major source of revenue for organized crime groups and terrorists alike…” (see page 4) – It is clear from Interpol’s other statements on data that it has no evidence to show cultural property to be a major revenue source for terrorists.
Following these conflicting claims and lack of vital intelligence, what does Interpol publish on its website in 2024?
Despite providing no data, and having admitted that it has never had it, nor is ever likely to obtain it, Interpol’s headline claim on its Cultural Heritage home page is: “Trafficking in cultural property is a low-risk, high-profit business for criminals with links to organized crime.”
Click through to the section on Crimes: The issues – cultural property, and it is largely populated by general statements. The one hard claim is that “the majority of thefts are carried out from private homes”.
The related news section at the bottom includes links to other news, including the most recent release on a transnational operation, Pandora VII, from May 2023, which again limits data to arrests and seizures, but gives no information on outcomes.
Nowhere on its website does Interpol provide clear data as to the scope and value of illicit cultural property.
However, despite admitting that it does not have the data, and despite WCO and other figures showing it not to be true, and despite updating the Art Crime home page, Interpol still promotes false claims via an out-of-date video from 2015 on its web page How we fight cultural crime.
Worse still is that the person making the claims in the video is Interpol’s Secretary General Jürgen Stock, who states that the illicit trade in cultural property is as lucrative as those for drugs, weapons and counterfeit goods, and then directly links them to terrorist financing, even though no evidence of this happening has been provided beyond the very limited Abu Sayyaf case of May 2015. In doing so, he directly links these purported crimes to the international art market, despite providing no evidence to support this.
The Secretary General makes his claims based on UN sanctions relating to Syria (2199) and Iraq, but these are preventive measures, not evidence of executed crimes. At the time of adoption in 2014, the sanctions’ text stated that terrorists were benefiting from trade in cultural property but gave no examples of this happening. As noted above, the Abu Sayyaf raid in 2015 – after the sanctions were introduced – remains the only cited example of this happening, and the sums involved were small and not clearly identified.
It is not clear from the website that the video is from 2015, so viewers may think this is current thinking at Interpol. Mr Stock must surely know better now nine years on from this recording and should remove it from the website. The ADA and fellow trade association IADAA have contacted him directly recently and asked him to update the website, but so far we had no reply.
To repeat: Nowhere on its website does Interpol provide clear data as to the scope and value of illicit cultural property
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