Returned to Italy 266 artifacts from U.S., Villanovan, Etruscan, Greek and Roman

Carabinieri from the Comando Tutela Patrimonio Culturale have brought back to Italy from the United States 266 valuable archaeological artifacts, ranging from the Villanovan age (9th/8th centuries B.C.) to the Etruscan civilization (7th/4th centuries B.C.), Magna Graecia (5th/8th centuries B.C.) to the Imperial Roman age. The holdings are roughly estimated on the world cultural heritage market at several tens of millions of euros. It had come overseas in the last decades of the last century to be disposed of by unscrupulous international traffickers.

The recovery was achieved following extensive investigations coordinated by the Italian Judiciary and the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office (DAO - District Attorney’s Office of New York), with Assistant District Attorney NY, Colonel Matthew Bogdanos and colleagues from Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), and also thanks to the constant synergy between the Carabinieri dell’Arte and the Department of Culture.

The restitution ceremony was held on August 8 in New York City, at the headquarters of the Prosecutor’s Office, in the presence of Prosecutor Alvin L. Bragg, Deputy Consul of Italy in New York Cesare Bieller, Commander of the Carabinieri TPC, Brigadier General Vincenzo Molinese, Deputy Prosecutor of the Manhattan DAO, Colonel Matthew Bogdanos, and HSI’s Special Agent in Charge, Ivan J. Arvelo.

Among the recovered works are, in particular, seventy lots (a total of 145 pieces) that were part of the bankruptcy proceedings against British citizen Robin Symes, located thanks to the investigations conducted by the TPC Command, coordinated by the Public Prosecutor’s Office at the Court of Rome, aimed at countering international trafficking in cultural property. The activities then also resulted in an out-of-court procedure and a civil lawsuit, conducted in close collaboration with the Ministry of Culture through the State Attorney General’s Office, aimed at the return of the goods to the indisputable patrimony of the Italian state.

And sixty-five artifacts, formerly in the collection at the “Menil Collection Museum” in Houston (USA), in spontaneous restitution by the owner entity to the Ministry of Culture, having been ascertained by the Carabinieri TPC to have come from clandestine excavations in archaeological areas of Italian territory and illegal export.

Returned to Italy 266 artifacts from U.S., Villanovan, Etruscan, Greek and Roman

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