Dealer Georges Lofti Wanted for Selling ‘Hundreds’ Looted Artworks – RisePEI

Georges Lofti, an 81-year-old Lebanese artwork vendor and longtime supply of knowledge to authorities worldwide pursuing antiquities traffickers, is now the topic of an artwork smuggling investigation, in line with courtroom papers filed final week.

A felony courtroom in New York issued a warrant for Lofti’s arrest on August 3, charging him with felony possession of stolen property and accusing him of possessing looted artifacts and abating within the trafficking of “lots of of items” from the Center East.

In 2021, Lofti, a frequent collaborator of Matthew Bogdanos, head of the Manhattan district legal professional’s Antiquities Trafficking Unit (ATU), and Robert Mancene, a Homeland Safety agent, invited investigators to view antiquities held in his storage unit in Jersey Metropolis, N.J., in line with an affidavit accompanying the arrest warrant.

Within the affidavit, Mancene asserted that Lofti believed that the artworks would face up to any investigation by the ATU and thus make it simpler for Lofti to promote or donate them.

“Primarily based on my conversations with the defendant during the last a number of years,” Mancene wrote within the affidavit, “I imagine the defendant thought he had laundered the antiquities so properly and had created such good (albeit false) provenance that he didn’t assume the A.T.U. would have the ability to decide their true origin.”

Lotfi, who has residences in Lebanon, New York, and France, has collected and dealt antiquities from the Mediterranean for many years.

Lofti was a key supply on a number of the highest-profile seizures by the ATU lately. The affidavit particulars how a tip from the vendor led to the confiscation of the gilded Coffin of Nedjemankh (1st century B.C.E.) from the Metropolitan Museum of Artwork in 2019. The ornamented artifact was the centerpiece of the exhibit, “Nedjemankh and His Gilded Coffin,” which shuttered early after investigators decided that it had been plundered from a tomb in Egypt.

The seizure of the coffin has infamously triggered in an ongoing worldwide investigation into $56 million value of looted Egyptian antiquities offered to the Louvre Abu Dhabi and the Met.

In the meantime, the affidavit alleges, Lofti was taking part within the smuggling of antiquities from war-torn areas of Syria, Lebanon, and Libya. The affidavit states that Lofti admitted to being the primary proprietor of a marble bull’s head, valued at $12 million, that was offered to disgraced antiquities collector Michael Steinhardt and later loaned to the Met. In 2016, curators on the museum contacted Lebanese officers after analysis into the two,300-year-old piece raised considerations that it had been looted from Lebanon within the Eighties through the nation’s civil struggle. American authorities seized the sculpture in 2017 and subsequently repatriated it to Lebanon.

In an e mail he wrote to Mancene in 2018, Lofti stated that he purchased the bull sculpture, together with a marble torso and a draped determine, in northern Lebanon from the “well-known licensed vendor,” Farid Ziadé. The torso was put available on the market at $10 million, and later seized at Lofti’s New York condo, in line with the affidavit. The draped determine was discovered by Lebanese customs brokers in a container Lofti had shipped from New York to Tripoli.

24 antiquities have been seized as far as a part of the investigation into Lofti’s actions: 23 mosaics from Syria and Lebanon and a 1,500-pound limestone statue that the affidavit says originated from the traditional Syrian metropolis of Palmyra. All 24 objects carried the identical “fabricated generic provenance,” in line with Mancene, and have been seized in New York in 2021. The investigators allege, nevertheless, that “a number of” different mosaics are nonetheless available on the market or within the assortment of the Met.

Lofti instructed the New York Times that his antiquities assortment was bought from licensed sellers and  sanctioned by the Lebanese authorities. He claimed to be shocked that investigators have been focusing on him given their historical past: “I used to be combating with them for 10 years to cease illicit buying and selling, they usually turned towards me.” He additionally stated he had supposed to return a number of the items to Lebanon earlier than they have been seized by ATU brokers.

Investigators contend that Lofti’s widely-known experience on illicit buying and selling in the end was his downfall. He knew the markers of a looted object, Mancene wrote, so couldn’t declare ignorance to the problems with the provenance of the antiques he bought. Among the many proof towards Lofti are pictures he exhibited to brokers that present the items “with encrustations” on the time of their acquisition. Reliable excavations contain cleanings of any notable findings, the investigators notice.

“He has demonstrated not solely his intimate data of the unlawful commerce in antiquities from the Center East and North Africa,” Mancene says within the affidavit, “but in addition his acute consciousness of the hallmarks of looted antiquities from his prolonged involvement in shopping for, promoting, or in any other case dealing in antiquities — thereby revealing to me his consciousness of the stolen nature of his personal antiquities.”