Lava Treasure: a new trial in Marseille, almost 40 years after the discovery

Félix Biancamaria's lawyers announced Monday that they would plead for their client, who risks up to five years of imprisonment, to be "relaxed" and for "his dish to be returned to him" at the end of his trial before the court. Marseille correctional facility.

Already sentenced in 1986 to 18 months' suspended imprisonment for hijacking a maritime wreck - a sentence confirmed in 1995 on appeal - Biancamaria is now being prosecuted for concealment of theft and smuggling a national treasure.

The affair hit the headlines. While fishing for sea urchins in 1985 in Corsica, near Ajaccio, the man discovered a dish and gold coins (nearly 600 in total) struck with the effigy of Roman emperors from the 3rd century. These are aurels or multiples of the emperors Gallienus, Claudius II the Gothic, Quintille and Aurelian. Eighteen of them would be unique in the world and worth several million euros.

This treasure was largely dispersed when Félix Biancamaria, his brother and an accomplice were sentenced in 1994 to 18 months in prison and a fine of 20,000 euros. And this find will result in Félic Biancamaria being tried again on January 29 and 30 for “concealment of the theft of a maritime treasure”.

“He only has his eyes left to cry with,” declared Monday at a press conference in Paris one of his lawyers, Me Amale Kenbib, accusing the State of “appropriating this monetary treasure” that numismatists consider it one of the most important in the world.

The case came back into the news when he was arrested at Roissy airport in 2010, in possession of a gold dish considered to be one of the centerpieces of the treasure discovered in the Gulf of Lava, off the coast of Ajaccio. .

He then confirmed having found the dish during dives in the 1980s. The object, whose price is estimated between 6 and 8 million euros, had been entrusted to the department of underwater and underwater archaeological research at the Ministry of Culture (Drassm).

According to the sixty-year-old's other lawyer, Me Anna-Maria Sollacaro, at the time the legislation covering maritime discoveries did not provide for any provisions other than those for the diversion of wrecks. Then, “we participated in a hasty movement to create new legislation following the discovery to be able to appropriate the treasure” by introducing a notion of “maritime cultural property”.

However, it is “much more likely that this treasure emanates from the Roman occupation of the time than from a shipwreck”, underlines Me Sollacaro, denouncing a violation of the principle of “non-retroactivity of criminal law”.

Experts - historians, archaeologists and divers - cited by the defense will testify at the trial to challenge the wreck hypothesis. If the treasure was originally on dry land, the discoverer is entitled to 50% of its value. But if it is damaged at sea, it indeed belongs entirely to the State.