Trafficking in antiquities, the start of a response

November 2017. Egyptologists can’t believe it. The stele of Tutankhamun is intact, an extremely rare state of preservation for buildings dedicated to this pharaoh. Also, its size imposes – 1.68 m. And then, there are these silhouettes engraved in the pink granite, an artistic gesture of such great mastery… The Louvre Abu Dhabi Museum, just inaugurated, then reveals to the world the sublime monument which it has just acquired .

Five years later, this pink granite stele summarizes a resounding investigation which led to eight indictments, including those of the former president of the Louvre Jean-Luc Martinez and his right-hand man at the time, Jean-François Charnier , respectively in May and July. Both are suspected of having facilitated the acquisition by the Louvre Abu Dhabi of seven Egyptian works of art of dubious provenance. Probably looted items.

Whatever its legal consequences (see opposite), “the Louvre Abu Dhabi affair” has shed light on the workings of an illicit trade but has remained, until now, off the radar of the public and investigators. : that of antiquities taken illegally in Egypt, as well as in Syria, Iraq, Libya, to be sold to collectors and Western museums. A sizeable component of the traffic in works of art which, however muted it may be, represents the third largest in the world, behind drugs and weapons, and is similar to serious crime. “The purchase of cultural property is very interesting for laundering ill-gotten money, especially in the context of a crisis, where art is a safe haven”, explains Colonel Hubert Percie du Sert, head of the Office center for the fight against trafficking in cultural property (OCBC).

On the front line in the investigation into the Louvre Abu Dhabi affair, this “art police”, with a team of 30 people (half police, half gendarmerie) and judicial police powers, has the task of to “participate in the dismantling of networks”, according to its leader, who intends to raise awareness among buyers: “They can no longer do as before and say to themselves ‘I don’t have to ask myself questions about the origin good as soon as I acquired it”. The proliferation of conflicts, which encourage looting, requires vigilance. »

Thanks to the Louvre Abu Dhabi affair and American investigations, this vigilance is gradually being established. “Museums are becoming aware of their vulnerability to ingenious traffickers who cover their tracks, facilitating the acquisition of illegal objects”, notes Vincent Michel, professor of oriental archeology at the University of Poitiers and organizer, in 2021, of an exhibition at the Louvre on the illicit traffic in antiquities. For the thugs, the current context of the creation of large museums, as in the Emirates, is proving conducive to the flow of their merchandise.

The highlighting of the porosity between trafficking in antiquities and the financing of Daesh also explains this burst. In May 2015, the American military discovered documents attesting that the terrorists partly financed their activities with the proceeds of wild archaeological looting. The expression “blood antiquities” is a must. Six months later, Jean-Luc Martinez, president of the Louvre at the time, submitted a report on “the protection of heritage in armed conflict” to François Hollande. The fight against antiquities trafficking has become a political necessity.

But, on the ground, how to untangle the skein of a trade opaque to the innumerable intermediaries – looters, exporters, merchants…? Despite the existence of the OCBC, France does not yet have any magistrates specializing in the subject. A lack that is all the more cruel since “there is no standard traffic pattern”, according to Vincent Michel.

First difficulty: an antiquity torn from its site does not appear in any inventory. “For a work stolen from a collection, we have documents,” explains archaeologist Morgan Belzic, a specialist in Libya. Conversely, a looted work has no “papers”. Impossible to integrate it into Psyché, the Interpol directory of stolen cultural property.

To stay on the alert despite everything, customs officers have the 19 “red lists” of the International Council of Museums (Icom), “types of objects vulnerable to looting and sought after by collectors”, explains Vincent Michel. Each country corresponds to a set of objects classified by subject and by category. Photos accompany it. So much information supposed to put the chip in the ear. “If customs officers come across cuneiform tablets, they can identify them and know that they are among the most sought-after objects from Iraq,” explains the archaeologist.

You still have to have a lucky hand… “The flow is such that it’s impossible to control everything”, notes Morgan Belzic. The only solution: the unannounced control, which however reserves good surprises. In Egypt, in 2014, customs officers thus discovered a pile of statues from Cyrenaica (Libya), Egypt and Sudan in a container stamped “Toilet paper”. Once at their destination, fraudulent shipments sometimes wait for years, hidden in containers. “1.3 million works are sleeping in the free ports of Geneva,” says Vincent Michel. The traffickers make people forget the objects whose disappearance would have been noticed, because of their imposing size for example. »

To put them on the market, traffickers must invent a pedigree of the plundered work to deceive buyers with a veneer of legality. “It is a question of creating a document which includes, for example, a date of purchase prior to any international regulations, that is to say before 1970 (1), the name of a collector and his country”, explains Morgan Belzic. This is the “provenance”, or the history of affiliations. The strings sometimes lack finesse. The researcher thus remembers the name of a collector straight from the letterhead of the hotel that had just been bought by a trafficker…

Despite this, can buyers detect trickery? “You need outside expertise,” says American lawyer Lynda Albertson, a specialist in illicit trafficking in works of art. But, in France, archaeologists are not consulted enough during acquisitions. However, the curators cannot be neutral at this time: they must fill their museum. »

A code of ethics requires them to do everything “to ensure that the origin of ownership corresponds to legal frameworks”. A requirement that lacks precision, recognized in November the Ministry of Culture, in a report caused by the shock wave of the Louvre Abu Dhabi affair. It is one of the many gaps to be filled in order to erect a rampart at the height of a formidable traffic.

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