Fifty-five years ago today, on May 3, 1969, a crucial chapter in the protection of Italy's rich cultural heritage was written with the establishment of the special department of the Arma dei Carabinieri known as the "Nucleo Tutela Patrimonio Artistico." Since its inception, this unit has been entrusted with the vital task of safeguarding and protecting the nation's artistic legacy. Over the decades, it has evolved into the esteemed "Carabinieri Command for the Protection of Cultural Heritage," earning recognition both nationally and internationally for its unwavering dedication and exemplary ..read more

Image Credit: S. King Today on May 2, 2024 the First Section of the European Court of Human Rights, also known as the Strasbourg Court, (ECHR - Cour européenne des droits de l'homme) rejected the J. Paul Getty Museum’s appeal and entered a ruling in the case of The J. Paul Getty Trust and Others v. Italy (Application no. 35271/19) upholding the decision issued by Italian authorities aimed at the recovery of the bronze statue, “Victorious Youth” (also referred to as the “Athlete of Fano” or the “Lysippus of Fano”), dating to the classical period. This judgment will become f ..read more

Yesterday Bakur Abuladze, First Deputy Prosecutor General of Georgia announced the arrest of four individuals in the Eastern European country on charges of stealing rare 19th century books from national and university libraries in the Czech Republic, Germany, Estonia , France, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, and Switzerland.    The arrests were born out of transnational crime group operation involving law enforcement officers from France, Germany, Lithuania and Switzerland, with coordination assistance via Europol and Eurojust.  Searching aparments and places of sale a large amo ..read more

Photo Credit ANP Once upon a time the individual pictured above, Jan-Dirk Paarlberg had a prominent place in the Quote 500 with a fortune according to business publications that at its peak reached 280 million euros.  A buyer and seller of works of art, his collection is said to have included works on canvas and paper by Marc Chagall, Claude Monet, Kees van Dongen, Pierre Bonnard, Karel Appel, Pablo Picasso, and Pierre-Auguste Renoir, to name a few, as well a at least one sculpture, a statue by Feranando Botero.   Forty-one objects from his collection have been consigne ..read more

On 19 April 2024 Christ Church, a constituent college of the University of Oxford in England, announced the recovery of one of three stolen paintings, A Rocky Coast, with Soldiers Studying a Plan by the Italian Baroque painter Salvator Rosa.  This painting, along with two other Baroque Period artworks, had been stolen from the Christ Church Picture Gallery at around 11pm on Saturday, 14 March 2020. According to the college press release, the painting had been recovered in Romania after law enforcement officers in the country had been contacted by a ..read more

TEFAF Maastricht 2022 Image Credit: ARCA Earlier this week, ARCA published an article building on an announcement made by Spain's Ministry of the Interior which involved the identification of a looted Egyptian object.  This investigation involved the Policía Nacional in collaboration with the Dutch Politie, and the expertise of forensic scholars, as well as the assistance of cooperating dealers and the support of art fair personnel.  These combined efforts resulted in the voluntary handover of the trafficked artefact in the Netherlands, as well as the reported arre ..read more

TEFAF Maastricht 2020 Image Credit: ARCA According to Spain's Ministry of the Interior, following an investigation begun in 2023, the Policía Nacional have arrested Spanish gallery owner Jaume Bagot Peix, operator of J. Bagot Arqueología for allegedly committing the crimes of money laundering, smuggling, and document falsification in relation to this black granite head of a funerary monument for a high ranking official from the reign of Hatshepsut or Tuthmosis III in Egypt.  TEFAF Maastricht 2022 Image Credit: ARCA Valued at 190,000 euros, the artefact had been acquired ..read more

After a rare bas-relief appeared in an online auction, with an asking price of 210 thousand Ukrainian Hryvni, historians with the National Museum of the History of Ukraine notified law enforcement about the suspicious upcoming sale. Believed by its wear to be a wind-blown architectural element, which at some point adorned the exterior façade of the unknown 12 to 13th century "white stone" church, experts believed the stone sculpture had been removed by looters in contravention of national law, based on the fact of illegal appropriation by a person of someone else's property or trea ..read more

In early June 2021 Hobby Lobby Inc, owned by craft store mogul, David Green,  filed a Civil Complaint for fraud against former professor Dirk Obbink.  According to Civil Docket No. 21-CV-3113, the craft conglomerate alleged that as many as 32 items that it had purchased between 2010 and 2013 from the Oxford professor, to be featured in the Museum of the Bible (MOTB), were not his to sell.   Instead, the papyrus fragments the scholar sold them via Private Sale agreements had been stolen from Egyptian Exploration Society's collection.  The fragments were identified as ..read more

Sponsored by:  The New Zealand Art Crime Research Trust Date:  Saturday, 18 May 2024 Location:   RHLT3 (Lecture Theatre 3) Rutherford House, Pipitea Campus,  Victoria University of Wellington Te Herenga Waka Wellington, New Zealand. Times: 10:00 am - 7 pm The New Zealand Art Crime Research Trust’s invites you to attend their 2024 symposium.  This year’s theme is Art Crime Research Today.  Presenters Include: Detective Inspector Scott Beard The theft and recovery of two Gottfried Lindauer portraits from Auckland’s International Art Cen ..read more