A grainy photo showing the severed marble head of an ancient Roman statue was presented at a highly unusual auction.
There are absolutely no documents confirming the origin or authenticity of the sculpture, only maps with the location marked in red.
Maps reveal looted Greek and Roman tombs in Libya.
The marble head of an ancient Roman statue in the collection of the Getty Museum of Art in Los Angeles (USA).
The photos of stolen antiquities were presented to Domenico Quirico, a journalist for La Stampa newspaper posing as an art collector – he cooperated with the police force protecting Italian cultural heritage in the cyber bust.
The head of an ancient marble statue – dating back to the Roman Empire – sold for $66,000.
Journalist Quirico’s investigation campaign showed that illegal trading activities were taking place quite widely.
Gioia Tauro is considered the most dangerous port in Italy, characterized by a series of illegally built buildings, most of which are from abandoned containers.
The National Museum in Baghdad (Iraq) was looted by IS.
In mid-October, Italian Interior Minister Angelino Alfano confirmed this to La Stampa newspaper, and warned about the sale and exchange of weapons and antiquities to fund IS in Libya: `We have
Italian drug cartels bought antiquities looted from Libya to supply a range of weapons to IS – including AK guns and grenade launchers from the Camorra’s arms smuggling source with Russia, Moldova and Ukraine.
In September 2016, Italian financial police discovered a Camorra weapons cache in a stolen truck parked in an abandoned parking lot in a slum on the outskirts of Naples – which contained many canvas bags containing 8
Ndrangheta’s weapons were seized by Italian police.
Antiquities purchased from IS are sold on the black market by the drug cartel to art collectors who do not care about their origin.
In April 2016, Russian ambassador Vitaly Churkin to the United Nations (UN) issued a warning to the UN Security Council (UNSC) about the smuggling of antiquities to fund terrorism: `About 100,000 cultural heritage items.`
According to art historian and journalist Luca Nannipieri, author of the recently published book `The Art of Terror,` many of the looted antiquities that IS smuggled end up in museums, universities and
Author Nannipieri spent 2 years tracking traces of a number of artifacts originating from archaeological sites controlled by IS.
According to Thien Minh (summary)
World security
