The New York justice system returned to Italy on Thursday 14 looted and stolen works of art, some dating from Roman and Greek antiquity, worth 2.5 million dollars and which have been the object of international trafficking to the United States.
The New York State court has been carrying out a vast campaign for more than two years to restore looted antiquities from twenty countries, which have landed in museums and galleries in the megalopolis, including the prestigious Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Heavy traffic
Led by Manhattan County Attorney Alvin Bragg, more than 700 pieces valued at more than $100 million have been returned over the past year to 17 countries, including Cambodia, India, Pakistan, Egypt, Iraq, Greece or Italy.
The 14 works (some 2,600 years old) returned Thursday, during a ceremony with Italian Consul General Fabrizio Di Michele and the Italian carabinieri, are part of a batch of 214 pieces (with a total value of $35 million) returned to Rome in the last seven months, welcomed the services of prosecutor Bragg in a press release.
According to the statement, the 14 returned works “had been stolen and trafficked by known (Italian) art dealers Giacomo Medici and Giovanni Franco Becchina and Robert Hecht,” a Paris-based American art dealer who died in 2012.
These men “relied on gangs of grave robbers to rob well-chosen archaeological sites because they were poorly protected, around the Mediterranean,” the New York justice denounced.
Source: BFM TV
