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.
by ADA | Jan 16, 2025 | Views |
Impending enforcement of a new EU law that is not fit for purpose risks creating serious human rights breaches
The UK Post Office scandal has been a landmark of injustice that has outraged the public and politicians alike. Sub-postmasters were convicted of theft and even jailed – and one even committed suicide – when the real problem was the faulty Horizon computer system. For years the Post Office pursued the innocent while burying evidence of the true cause.
As victims have fought back, one of the aspects that has arisen time and again was the fact that the Post Office and its lawyers demanded that sub postmasters prove their innocence by demonstrating that the Horizon system had a problem. As The Law Society Gazette summed it up in the case of Lee Castleton from 2006, “the Post Office’s strategy was to put the burden on Castleton to prove that the Horizon IT system was not working properly – effectively reversing the burden of proof”.
Richard Moorhead, Professor of Law and Professional Ethics at the University of Exeter and Honorary Professor of Law at UCL, is a consulting expert on the scandal and has written extensively about it.
He concluded: “Our analysis of Lee Castleton’s case shows how misaligned the desire to win and justice can become. The problems are particularly acute when one side is unrepresented. There is a question here whether the lawyers were overly influenced by a legitimate, if opportunistic, strategy. The courts need to think long and hard about allowing artful legal argument to shift evidential burdens onto those least able to prove their case.”
As Doughty Street Chambers reported: “In Hamilton & Others, Tim Moloney KC and Kate O’Raghallaigh were appointed lead advocates by the Court of Appeal and represented 29 of the 39 appellants for whom the Court found that the investigative and disclosure failings of Post Office Limited were “so egregious as to make the prosecution of any of the ‘Horizon cases’ an affront to the conscience of the court” and that, in their conduct of the prosecutions, the Post Office “reversed the burden of proof”.”
Reversal of the burden of proof an aggravating factor
Clearly, the Post Office’s tendency to reverse the burden of proof to cover its tracks and shift the blame to sub-postmasters was a very serious aggravating factor in the scandal.
When ITV screened Mr Bates vs the Post Office, a drama series based on the scandal, it became the most celebrated show of the year and transformed the debate at the highest level, most specifically because of the reversal of the burden of proof aspect that led to such injustice. After more than a decade of fighting to clear their names and get recompense, it was this that finally galvanised the authorities and led to a public inquiry.
So, when is it reasonable to reverse the burden of proof under the law?
Being found in possession of a deadly weapon such as a knife now comes with a presumption of intent to use it under English law – an understandable development.
In 2021, the Council of Europe’s Warsaw anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing convention committee called on its States Parties to effectively apply the reversal of the burden of proof regarding the lawful origin of alleged proceeds or other property liable to confiscation in serious offences.
The 2021 report of the Conference of the Parties looked at the 2005 Council of Europe’s Convention on Laundering, Search, Seizure and Confiscation of the Proceeds from Crime and on the Financing of Terrorism. It evaluated the extent to which 34 States Parties have legislative or other measures in place for the burden of proof to be reversed, a possibility provided for in Article 3 (4) of the Convention.
That stipulates that “Each Party shall adopt such legislative or other measures as may be necessary to require that, in respect of a serious offence as defined by national law, an offender demonstrates the origin of alleged proceeds or other property liable to confiscation to the extent that such a requirement is consistent with the principles of its domestic law”.
The key words here are “in respect of a serious offence as defined by national law” – in other words, where a serious offence has been identified as having taken place.
Mission creep: from serious offence to casual risk prevention
The problem the art market faces in dealing with regulation and the authorities now is mission creep. Application of the reversal of the burden of proof has moved far beyond the test of whether a serious offence has occurred and into the realm of what is effectively casual risk prevention.
It is now becoming the norm to apply the reversal of the burden of proof for provenance within the international art market and for those importing their possessions, even where no evidence at all exists of a risk of money laundering or terrorism financing.
As with the sub-postmasters, it is not possible to provide evidence that either does not exist, or that you cannot gain access to, to prove your innocence – in which case you are assumed to be guilty. Just as the courts were scandalised by this attitude and approach in the Post Office scandal, so should they be in the treatment of the art market and private citizens with regards to their property.
The imposition of the ‘reversal’ standard across the board on a huge range of imports under EU Reg 2019/880 relating to cultural goods is utterly disproportionate, proportionality being the international legal test for whether such measures are reasonable, as well as a prerequisite of the European Commission President’s official policy on lawmaking.
A key pledge on page 7 of the EC President’s new political guidelines reinforces this concept: “Future legislation must also be simplified and designed with small businesses in mind and in a spirit of subsidiarity.”
Wise words that fly in the face of what is actually happening.
Violation of the presumption of innocence
Let’s not forget that the European Commission’s own research, in the form of two studies commissioned to show, among other things, the level of terrorism financing across all its member states, found no evidence at all. So no evidence, and yet the enforcement of the ‘reversal’ policy as though evidence had been found.
As the UK Appeal Court noted in the Supreme Court of Canada, Dickson CJC said that “[i]f an accused is required to prove some fact on the balance of probabilities to avoid conviction, the provision violates the presumption of innocence because it permits a conviction in spite of a reasonable doubt in the mind of the trier of fact as to the guilt of the accused.[60]”
That level of proof will soon be applied to importers of cultural property to the EU. Without any evidence showing that terrorism financing, which initially prompted this law, is a problem, the application of such a standard when no offence – serious or otherwise – has been identified appears disproportionate. As such, it is in breach of Article 1, Protocol 1 of the European Convention of Human Rights, which stipulates that individuals should be able to enjoy possession of their private property without arbitrary interference.
If evidence of terrorism financing had been clear, then raising the breach of 2019/880 rules to the level of serious crime might be justified on the understanding that serious crime is largely defined by the severity of harm caused by the offence. Without that evidence, however, reversing the burden of proof risks becoming a violation of human rights, just as it was in the cases related to the Post Office scandal.
Photo caption, above: ITV’s Mr Bates vs the Post Office, the drama series that transformed the debate on the Post Office scandal. The scandal’s reversal of the burden of proof aspect outraged the public and politicians.
by ADA | Jan 4, 2025 | Views |
Alerting the public to existential threats posed to much of the art market by draconian regulations is a difficult task. Unless your audience has a stake in the game, it can be difficult to hold their attention or gain their sympathy.
Surely this is just another example of the market pleading for special treatment, critics will say.
So, getting the message across can depend on making a connection with something that resonates far more closely with the public’s conscience.
This is where the Windrush scandal comes in.
Its origins date to 1948, just after the Second World War, when the British Nationality Act granted British subjects from the Colonies the right to come to the UK and settle. Many came from Jamaica and other parts of the Caribbean, and what became known as the Windrush generation acquired its name from the Empire Windrush, one of the first ships to transport them across the Atlantic to Britain’s shores.
Up to 1970 around 500,000 people arrived in Britain under the scheme, encouraged to make the journey by successive governments in an effort to help rebuild the country post-war.
Having a legal right to come to the UK, they neither needed nor were given any documents upon entry, nor following changes in immigration laws in the early 1970s.
When former colonies established their independence, new legislation limited the rights of their citizens to emigrate to the UK. Those who had arrived before 1973 had an automatic right to remain permanently unless they left the UK for more than two years.
Enshrining rights in legislation
Again, because the right was automatic, many people who qualified were never given, nor asked to provide, documentary evidence of their right to remain. Those rights were further enshrined by the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999, which protected long-standing residents of the UK from Commonwealth countries from enforced removal.
The Home Office deemed such people adequately protected when immigration legislation was updated in 2014, and so the provision was not included. By then, however, the UK was already operating a hostile environment policy to discourage immigration and to make it easier to expel illegal immigrants.
As policy tightened, ID checks and other measures such as the continuing provision of services made it necessary for individuals to prove that they had legal residence.
When the scandal eventually broke in 2018, thanks to legal action by the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), it became clear that people had been wrongly detained, denied legal rights, and threatened with deportation, because they could not prove their status; 83 cases of wrongful deportation were identified. Others lost their jobs and homes or had their passports confiscated and were denied health care or benefits to which they were entitled.
The Home Secretary, Amber Rudd, resigned over the scandal.
The ensuing independent inquiry, Windrush Lessons Learned Review, reported back in early 2020, ruling that the Home Office had shown “ignorance and thoughtlessness” and that what had happened had been “foreseeable and avoidable”. It further found that immigration regulations were tightened “with complete disregard for the Windrush generation” and that officials had made “irrational” demands for multiple documents to establish residency rights.
“Ignorance and thoughtlessness”; “foreseeable and avoidable”; “complete disregard”; “irrational”.
Essentially, the innocent fell victim to a cruel and excessive policy because of the retroactive application of modern standards: although when they came to Britain documentary evidence of their residency rights was seen as unnecessary and so not issued, they were being forced to provide it decades later or suffer the consequences.
The demand to supply non-existent documentation
This is what was meant as “irrational”; how can you supply evidence that never existed? How can the authorities demand it when they know it never existed?
Not just “irrational”, the policy was also tyrannical, undemocratic, and a breach of human rights. No wonder politicians expressed their shame and resigned; no wonder the public and human rights bodies were outraged.
And yet, this is far from an isolated incident.
At the heart of almost every debate between the art market and the authorities, regarding cultural property, is the matter of provenance. Vanishingly few artworks and artefacts have a complete documented history dating back to their creation or discovery. In many cases this is because where such documentation once existed, it has been lost or destroyed over time. In many other cases it never existed because it was not required at the time of original sale or export.
Nonetheless, those who challenge the market – from governments and NGOs to law enforcement and advocacy bodies – demand that such documentation must be provided now if these items are to be allowed to circulate freely in the international market. Failure to provide this non-existent paperwork to meet a modern standard that was not in place before very often results in these items being deemed illicit and so seized.
Far from being ashamed, embarrassed and outraged at this treatment of businesses and individuals, those championing such policies continue to press for more restrictions.
If you agree that the victims of the Windrush scandal were ill-treated and were subject to a serious infringement of their human rights by being subjected to such unreasonable demands, then the violation of rights meted out to market professionals and private individuals alike on the same score should concern you deeply.
by ADA | Jun 14, 2024 | News
Leading art market lawyer says new regulation will risk isolating the EU culturally
British trade associations concerned about impending EU legislation that will affect UK exports will brief dealers on the changes at a seminar in London on June 28.
Titled The increasing difficulty in the international movement of ancient coins and objects, the afternoon session is organised by law firm Devonshires, who will host the event at their London offices and online on behalf of the British Numismatic Trade Association and the Antiquities Dealers’ Association.
The session will focus on how to comply with the news EU import licensing regulation (2019/880), which comes fully into force on June 28, 2025, and affects art and objects created and originally discovered outside the EU.
Provenance, due diligence and paperwork are at the heart of concerns as the trade associations argue that the regulation will make it all but impossible to meet its demands.
Of particular concern is the manner in which the regulation reverses the burden of proof for importers to the EU. Instead of the authorities having to show that imported items have been stolen or illegally moved, it will be up to the importers to show that they haven’t.
Martin Wilson, co-chair of the newly formed Art Lawyers’ Association, summed up the challenges in an article published on June 13 titled The New EU Cultural Goods Import Law – Politics over Pragmatism?
Wilson, who is also Chief Legal Officer at Phillips Auctioneers and author of Art Law and the Business of Art, argues that the law is unlikely to prevent the trafficking of cultural property, one of its chief aims: “…the best-case scenario is that trafficking activities will simply be diverted to elsewhere in the world by this law, not stopped,” he writes. Worse, while the legitimate market will face the burden of compliance, traffickers will simply ignore the law, he believes.
“There is a risk that the more difficult it is to import an object legitimately the greater the incentive to resort to smuggling and the greater the rewards for doing so. If that happens trafficking activities will be neither stopped nor diverted – and may even increase,” Wilson warns.
It is also apparent that the EU authorities have significantly underestimated the challenge of establishing an effective electronic registration system for imports – “a mammoth task”, says Wilson – while customs officials are unlikely to have the relevant experience or expertise to deal with applications. The expected clampdown likely to result from this means will mean significant delays, inconsistency in rulings and unjustified refusals, he says.
Wilson concludes: “This complexity and delay – as well as the likely inconsistency of decisions – will likely be a strong disincentive to import art of any kind or origin into the EU. This will lead to fewer imports into the EU of art and fewer EU buyers of art in countries outside the EU. By making it harder to import cultural property, the EU will then risk becoming culturally isolated.”
This is the context in which the June 28 seminar will be conducted.It runs from 3pm to 5.30pm BST, with networking drinks to follow. Those interested in attending in person or remotely can find all the details here.
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