Thunderbolt in the midst of Parisian art and antiques dealers. Two of its well-known members, Christophe Kunicki and her husband Richard Semper, were arrested earlier this week and placed under investigation on Friday 26 June.
They are suspected of having laundered hundreds of ancient objects, worth several tens of millions of euros, from looting in several countries of the southern Mediterranean. Three other personalities from the community were also arrested and released.
4,500 sites, 100,000 objects
This case don’t surprise
Vincent Michel, professor of archeology at the University of Poitiers and consultant to the services for combating illegal trafficking in cultural objects.
The Arab Spring and the wars have opened the plunder valves and trafficking in antiques, particularly in Egypt, Libya, Iraq, Libya and Yemen. ISIS has literally robbed valuable archaeological sites like Apamea or Mari, which now look like lunar craters. For Daesh, archaeological excavations were also the responsibility of the Department of Natural Resources, such as petroleum …
It is estimated that Daesh has exploited 4,500 sites in Iraq and Syria alone
where he extracted more than 100,000 objects
. Coins, statues, mosaic fragments and cylinder seals, which are very popular because they are small and sell for several hundred thousand euros.
An established link with terrorism
This traffic is as lucrative as drugs or weapons
, explains Vincent Michel, who recalls that facing a legal global art market of $ 63.7 billion in 2018, the illegal market is estimated between 3 and 15 billion
. With, hammered the archaeologist, an established link with terrorism, including the perpetrators of the Bataclan attack
.
Yes le caliphate
has lost its territorial hold, specialists estimate that thousands of antiques have been hidden and will appear later on the market.
Main difficulty of sellers: Know how to give an appearance of legal provenance of objects whose trade is prohibited if they do not belong to collections formed before 1970 ”,
date of entry into force of a UNESCO convention regulating the trade in cultural goods.
98% of dubious origin
The traffickers therefore transit the objects through countries like Turkey, Lebanon, Israel, the Gulf countries, thanks to false certificates, to confuse the tracks, up to the buying countries
. It is estimated that France (7% of transactions) ranks fourth behind the United States, China and the United Kingdom.
In Germany, a recent survey has shown that 98% of the 6,000 antiques from the Mediterranean sold between 2015 and 2018 are of questionable origin. There is no reason for it to be otherwise in France ”,
worries Vincent Michel.
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