Over 58 artifact pieces worth $19 mn returned to Italy by New York

• A marble statue of the Greek goddess Athena from 200 BCE and a drinking cup from 470 BCE were two of the recovered valuables.
• Some of the stolen artifacts were discovered in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
• Manhattan DA’s office has returned nearly 300 antiquities valued at over $66 million to 12 countries this year.

Dozens of artifacts worth around $19 million that were stolen from Italy were returned by New York prosecutors on Tuesday. It included some that were discovered in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

“These 58 pieces represent thousands of years of rich history, yet traffickers throughout Italy utilized looters to steal these items and to line their own pockets,” said Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, noting that it was the third such repatriation in nine months.

“For far too long, they have sat in museums, homes, and galleries that had no rightful claim to their ownership,” he said at a ceremony attended by Italian diplomats and law enforcement officials.

The DA’s office said that Michael Steinhardt, one of the top collectors of ancient art in the world, had purchased the stolen pieces. They added that Steinhardt had received a “first-of-its-kind lifetime ban on acquiring antiquities.”

A marble statue of the Greek goddess Athena from 200 BCE and a drinking cup from 470 BCE were two of the recovered valuables, which in some cases were sold to “unwitting collectors and museums,” according to officials.

Four men, who “all led highly lucrative criminal enterprises – often in competition with one another – where they would use local looters to raid archaeological sites throughout Italy, many of which were insufficiently guarded,” according to the DA’s office, were responsible for the theft of the artifacts.

One of them, Pasquale Camera, was “a regional crime boss who organized thefts from museums and churches as early as the 1960s. He then began purchasing stolen artifacts from local looters and sold them to antiquities dealers,” it added.

It said that this year alone, the DA’s office has “returned nearly 300 antiquities valued at over $66 million to 12 countries.”

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