New York justice returns 42 archaeological works to Italy

New York justice returned this Tuesday, August 8 to Italy 42 archaeological works looted and sold in contraband, worth 3.5 million dollars, the American megalopolis being a hub of international antiquities trafficking. These exceptional pieces - some 2,500 years old - were returned, during a ceremony, to the Italian authorities by American investigators, according to a press release from the New York State Attorney for the Borough of Manhattan, Alvin Bragg.

"We continue to repair the damage caused by decades of very well organized networks of antiquities smuggling through Italy", welcomed Alvin Bragg, specifying that "more than 200 works had been returned" to Rome since he took over as head of the Manhattan prosecution in 2022. Carabinieri General Vincenzo Molinese hailed "the great success of the investigation thanks to an Italian-American collaboration".

Among the works found and returned is a vase from the Italian region of Puglia dating to 335 BC. It was stolen from a burial site in southern Italy before being smuggled abroad by a trafficker of Italian art, Giacomo Medici, according to the New York justice.

This chalice which was used to mix water and wine had been salvaged by a “disgraced British art dealer, Robin Symes, who then laundered it through (the auction company) Sotheby's in London”. The work was seized in July from a private collector in New York.

Two Etruscan-era tile paintings from 440 BC were looted in central Italy in the 1980s before ending up with Robin Symes, who sold them in 1992 for 1.6 million dollars to a couple of New York collectors, Shelby White and Leon Levy. Worried about the provenance of the works, White and Levy returned them in 1999 to Symes, who kept them in New York until last March.

In the cultural and economic capital of the United States, kingdom of grandiose museums such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the extremely wealthy auction houses Christie's and Sotheby's, the Manhattan prosecutor's office has been leading a campaign since 2017 to return works looted from around the world between 1970 and 1990, smuggled into Europe and the United States and seized from museums and private collections in New York.

Under the aegis of the prosecutor Bragg, more than 1000 parts for 185 million dollars were returned to 19 countries, including Cambodia, China, India, Pakistan, Egypt, Iraq, Greece, Turkey or Italy.