Carabinieri recover in Belgium a 1st century B.C. sculpture stolen in Rome in 2011

Carabinieri from the Cultural Heritage Protection Unit have recovered in Belgium a Roman marble statue from the first century B.C. depicting a Togatus, which had been stolen in November 2011 from the grounds of Villa Marini Dettina. The work was located in Brussels.Two carabinieri from the Archaeology Section discovered the statue during a... walk at the end of a working day in the Belgian capital, as part of some investigations carried out in the international field. The two soldiers were in fact browsing among the antique stores in the Sablon district and noticed the marble statue, presented with probable provenance from Italy, damaged in several parts due to blows probably inflicted by the tools used to steal it.

The two carabinieri became suspicious and upon returning to Italy, in collaboration with the Data Processing Section, they compared the images of the statue found in Brussels with those in the database of illegally stolen cultural property. Thanks to the comparison, it was possible to discover that the statue in Belgium was the one removed from Villa Marini Dettina: the sculpture was therefore seized at the order of the Rome Public Prosecutor’s Office following a European Investigation Order accepted by the Belgian authorities, and then repatriated in February.

Subsequently, investigations also developed abroad in cooperation with Belgium’s Direction Generale de l’Inspection Economique du SPF Economie uncovered an illicit trafficking of cultural goods headed by an Italian dealer, who used a Spanish pseudonym for criminal activities and was referred to the Rome Public Prosecutor’s Office for receiving and illegally exporting the statue. The Roman sculpture, depicting a Togatus, a very high historical-artistic expression of Italy’s cultural heritage, has a purely commercial estimate of about one hundred thousand euros.

Carabinieri recover in Belgium a 1st century B.C. sculpture stolen in Rome in 2011

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