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Art dealer cited in stolen gold Egyptian coffin case quizzed over looted antiquities in Paris
Former Louvre curator and auction house head among five quizzed in Paris as part of a wide-ranging inquiry into looted antiquities
A Parisian art dealer linked to the sale of a stolen gold Egyptian coffin in New York is among five experts arrested in the French capital this week on suspicion of selling looted Middle Eastern artefacts worth millions of euros, say French reports.
Christophe Kunicki, an expert in Mediterranean archaeology, was quizzed by officers from the Central Office for the Fight against the Trafficking of Cultural Goods, according to several media outlets.
Officers from the Central Office for the Fight Against Major Financial Crime, which specialises in fraud and money-laundering cases, were also involved in the inquiry.
Other experts reportedly questioned included Annie Caubet, a former curator at the Louvre, Paris archaeology dealer David Ghezelbash, and a Paris gallery owner. Lawyers for Mr Ghezelbash told le Journal des Arts he had been freed without charges on Friday.
The outlets also cited the chairman of Pierre Bergé & Associés, a renowned Parisian auction house that was founded by Pierre Bergé, the late fashion tycoon. The house has not commented on the reports of Antoine Godeau’s arrest.
They come amid claims that Paris is an international hub for trade in illegal artefacts.
The experts are suspected of concealing the origin of the items before selling them to customers, including some of the world’s leading museums, such as the Louvre’s outpost in Abu Dhabi and New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Last year, the US museum returned to Egypt a golden-sheathed coffin from the 1st century BC that it had bought in Paris in 2017 for €3.5 million.
The Met said it had bought the artefact in good faith from Mr Kunicki. But prosecutors in New York discovered that the coffin had been looted in Egypt in 2011 and sent from France to the US with a forged export licence.
Mr Kunicki denied wrongdoing and said that he had himself been the victim of fraud. He did not respond to a Telegraph email.
Experts say that the pillaging of ancient sites in the Middle East, notably since the 2003 Iraq war and 2011 Arab Spring uprisings and subsequent wars, have accelerated in recent times in countries like Egypt, Libya, Syria and Yemen.
The investigation is looking into “the trafficking of antiquities from countries that are politically unstable or at war”, said a judicial source.
British historian Jack Ogden told Libération: “It is extremely difficult to stop illicit trade, all the more so because the falsification of documents is very sophisticated now.”
He added: “I’ve invented my own rule to detect falsified documents, which proves to work in 80 per cent of cases: always assume they’re fakes.”