The Medici Conspiracy

by Peter Watson

  Shown alongside the restored plates is Dottoressa Daniela Rizzo, archaeologist at the Villa Giulia Museum in Rome, who helped Conforti and Ferri with technical expertise.

  The statue of Artemis, a photograph of which was found in the glove compartment in Pasquale Camera’s crashed car. This photograph was found in Robin Symes’ archive. The object itself is now on display in Rome.

  Kantharos by Euphronios, partially restored, partially broken, in Medici’s warehouse in the Geneva warehouse.

  Kantharos by Euphronios, totally restored, on display in the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles.

  Murky Polaroid of the Griffins, sitting on an Italian newspaper with encrusted soil, found in Medici’s warehouse in Geneva.

  Medici shown alongside the restored Griffins in the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles.

  Giacomo Medici, photographed alongside the Euphronios krater in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. This photograph was found during the police raid on his warehouse in Geneva Freeport. He was photographed several times with objects he had handled, after they went on display in museums around the world.

  Marion True, with Christo Michaelides, in Greece, 1998

  Robert Hecht photographed alongside the Euphronios krater in the Metropolitan Museum. This, too, was found in Medici’s warehouse in Geneva.

  Two of the fresco walls Medici dealt in. These are shown in situ, as they were found, photographed by the tomb raider, and show small balls of lapillæ, volcanic ash, filling the room to a depth of several feet and even adhering to the ceiling.

  The female figure from fresco wall 1, shown partially reassembled after the looting. The joins between the pieces have been covered with plaster prior to re-painting.

  Another fresco wall, showing the pieces cut into lap-top size fragments, reassembled and laid out on the restorer’s trestle table in Zurich, like a large jigsaw, prior to total restoration. The photo was found in Geneva.

  Another wall, reassembled and framed, almost ready for market. The upper panel is fresco wall 2. Beneath it is fresco wall 3. Was this entirely covered with volcanic lapillæ in illustration on page 6, or is it a separate wall entirely?

  Christo Michaelides (left) and Robin Symes at a black-tie dinner in Monte Carlo, July 1999. The following evening, in Italy, Christo fell down some stairs, hit his head on a radiator, and died in hospital. His death triggered the fall of Robin Symes.

  Bronze boy, showing the exceptional quality of the antiquities in the Symes’ archive. Various Polaroid photographs showed this object both before and after restoration. Its present whereabouts are unknown.

  He wrote to Koch, asking which New York dealer possessed the Stockholm piece in 1986. Koch replied that he didn’t know, and that the information about the object being on the New York market in that year had actually been added to the catalog manuscript by Karol Wight of the Getty, who edited the manuscript. According to Koch, the Getty had been offered the piece but had declined.

  Given this information, Lunden e-mailed Karol Wight, introduced himself, and asked if she could help him with the identity of the dealer in New York who possessed the Stockholm relief in 1986.

  Then something very odd happened. He got an e-mail in return later that day, but it wasn’t from Karol Wight and it wasn’t meant for him.

  It was from Marion True, and it read:Karol,

  On second thought, I would say that we do not have this information. I am concerned about his interest in the trade and getting Bob Hecht drawn into something that could be unpleasant for us as well. Just say “New York Market.” M.

  A few hours later, Lunden heard from Karol Wight, who said that “they” (the Getty’s Antiquities Department) were looking into his request. Five days after that, Karol Wight wrote again, to say that she had to consult Marion True, who was out of town. Then, on March 9, she wrote a third time to say that Marion True did not want to release the information, “to protect the confidentiality of the dealer and our relationship with them.”

  Lunden pressed her as to why the information was being withheld—was it the museum’s general policy or was there something “special” about this case. She replied, “I think I’d have to put this in a ‘special’ category.” Lunden pressed her again: “One wonders if these ‘non-public’ [dealers] are hiding something? Are these people not reputable dealers?”

  Wight replied: “Well, I think you’ve hit the nail on the head (to use an old expression) regarding the nature of dealers. Some are very public and appreciate recognition, others are not, usually because they’ve got something to hide or an unsavory past. This dealer had a spot of trouble in the past and prefers to keep a low profile with his arrangements.”

  What happened here? Following Lunden’s original e-mail, Wight must have contacted Marion True, who replied to her via e-mail, but somehow he received a communication never meant for his eyes.

  In January 2002, Frederick H. Schultz Jr. appeared before the South District Court of New York, charged with conspiracy, and receiving and dealing in stolen antiquities. His appearance was a sensation for three reasons. In the first place, he was not just any antiquities dealer—until 2000, when he had been indicted, he was president of the National Association of Dealers in Ancient, Oriental and Primitive Art, arguably the most powerful individual in the antiquities world, a man who had advised the U.S. government on its policy toward the heritage of other nations. The NADAOPA has been active for more than twenty-five years in representing the interests of dealers, particularly in opposing U.S. ratification and implementation of the 1970 UNESCO convention.

  The second reason for the sensational nature of the trial was Mr. Schultz’s partner in crime, a man who had smuggled countless looted objects out of Egypt. Jonathan Tokely-Parry was an English restorer with a made-up name (he was christened Jonathan Foreman), who referred to himself in correspondence with Schultz as “006½” and called the other man “004½.” Tokely-Parry’s smuggling technique was to cover stone or terra-cotta antiquities in liquid plastic and paint them garish colors so that they looked like modern tourist trinkets. The Englishman’s own trial in London in 1997 had itself been a sensational affair, with witnesses being threatened and with the defendant himself taking hemlock at one stage and having to be hospitalized, so that proceedings were delayed. Eventually, however, he was convicted of the dishonest handling of antiquities and given a six-year jail term.

  But the most important aspect of the Schultz trial was the verdict. Having been indicted in July 2001, he filed a motion to dismiss the government’s prosecution, essentially on the grounds that it did not accord with U.S. law and that the Egyptian law that had been contravened was not really an ownership law. According to an amicus curiae brief submitted to the U.S. court by Christie’s, the National Association of Dealers in Ancient, Oriental and Primitive Art, and the Art Dealers Association of America, “This indictment has sent shock waves through the art world.... The inevitable effect of subjecting U.S. citizens to the risk of imprisonment for violating foreign patrimony laws is that dealers, collectors and museums will be forced to abandon the trade and collection of any objects that any foreign government may unilaterally claim as its ‘cultural patrimony.’”

  In early January 2002, however, the U.S. court issued a landmark decision, ruling that foreign governments do own even undiscovered antiquities, provided they have laws such as Egypt has. That ruling meant that, in this case, unprovenanced antiquities that left Egypt since 1983 are, in the eyes of U.S. law, stolen. And importing stolen goods into the United States contravenes Section 2315 of the U.S. Penal Code. Since the court’s ruling, at least one major country now accepts that objects looted and smuggled from countries with strict heritage laws are, in effect, stolen property. The organization that Schultz led succeeded for years in holding up U.S. endorsement of the 1970 UNESCO protocol that outlawed dealing in unprovenanced antiquities. Where the United States leads, other countries are sure to follow.

  Moreover, at the end of the case, the
judge gave the jury some instructions that are of particular interest. Schultz had claimed in his defense that the government had failed to prove that he knew or believed that he was engaging in theft. The judge took care to instruct the jury thata defendant may not purposely remain ignorant of either the facts or the law in order to escape the consequence of the law. Therefore, if you [the jury] find that the defendant, not by mere negligence or imprudence but as a matter of choice, consciously avoided learning what Egyptian law provided as to the ownership of Egyptian antiquities, you may [infer], if you wish, that he did so because he implicitly knew that there was a high probability that the law of Egypt invested ownership of these antiquities in the Egyptian government. You may treat the deliberate avoidance of positive knowledge as the equivalent of such knowledge, unless you find that the defendant actually believed that the antiquities were not the property of the Egyptian government.

  In other words a sophisticated antiquities dealer cannot profess ignorance of the laws of the countries whence the objects he deals in originate.

  Schultz was found guilty and in June 2002 was fined $50,000 and sentenced to thirty-three months in prison. The judge made one other comment worth recording. He said that sophisticated defendants such as Schultz were not deterred by fines and so a prison sentence formed the main part of the penalty. That verdict and penalty were upheld on appeal. Schultz left prison in December 2005.

  So far as we know, Schultz was only on the edge of the Medici-Hecht cordata. It will be remembered from Chapter 15, on the matter of the orphans, that he provided one fragment of the krater by the Berlin Painter that was acquired by the Getty. The others were provided by Robin Symes, Frida Tchacos, and Dietrich von Bothmer.

  In July 2002, Raffaele Monticelli, who, according to Pasquale Camera’s organigram was a member of Becchina’s cordata, was found guilty of conspiracy at the Foggia tribunal and sentenced to four years. In some ways, the dating of the verdict was appropriate. It came a few days before Roberto Conforti, now a general, retired, on his sixty-fifth birthday. His strategy of putting pressure on the lesser lights first was beginning to have an effect.

  The Monticelli trial was notable for the many phone taps that were presented as evidence. Tomb robbers are usually extremely cagey on the phone, but the Carabinieri are patient and, just occasionally, the tombaroli let their guard slip. The following transcripts are not just vivid; they help remove any doubt about the scale of the looting and the quality of the discoveries. Among the taps presented in court was this exchange between Orazio Di Simoneaf and his capo zona for the Naples region, Francesco Liberatore. At first, like a lot of transcripts of phone taps, it didn’t make sense, but then it leaped into life. Apparently, the tombaroli in Campania were having problems and Liberatore was sent in to help sort it out.

  LIBERATORE: No, I don’t think so. But in my opinion they need money, they’re without money. Otherwise, sorry, but at this point what could they do? That thing’s beautiful, I saw it again, it’s beautiful but . . .

  DI SIMONE: We’ll see . . .

  LIBERATORE: And then . . . anyway, be that as it may, anyway you must show it to them . . .

  DI SIMONE: All right.

  LIBERATORE: Right?

  DI SIMONE: Certainly.

  LIBERATORE: They’ve got an amazing job on their hands! Just amazing!

  DI SIMONE: But the stuff from the walls, not even as a gift, see?

  LIBERATORE: No, no, and what . . . OK, the stuff from the walls, if it’s no good it’s no good . . . It’s that they can’t . . . now, while they’ve got this job . . . There’s about eighty meters [say, ninety yards] of tunnel that you can walk inside, standing up, with a wheelbarrow . . .

  DI SIMONE: Merda! Really?

  LIBERATORE: With lamps . . . But things . . . they’re going to get something from another property, understand?

  DI SIMONE: Yes, yes, yes . . .

  LIBERATORE: They start off from the property . . . from the property on this side . . .

  DI SIMONE: I see, and they walk underground . . .

  LIBERATORE: . . . and they’ve got another, more or less twelve to thirteen meters [say, fifteen yards] left to go . . .

  DI SIMONE: OK, let’s hope time will prove us right . . .

  The other exchange is between Monticelli himself and Benedetto D’Aniello, of Campania.

  D’ANIELLO: Well then, listen . . . I’ve got a small Etruscan gold cup, sixth to seventh century—that’s why I called you, understand? MONTICELLI: Eh . . .

  D’ANIELLO: . . . of those which come out [of the ground, common tombarolo language] together with buccheri, that period, I don’t know . . .

  MONTICELLI: And how are those decorated?

  D’ANIELLO: It has its little edge . . . the little edge is all incised; it’s got handles—the two little handles . . . stuff of the sixth, understand?

  MONTICELLI: It has the two . . . ?

  D’ANIELLO: . . . the two handles, yea?

  MONTICELLI: Hmmm . . .

  D’ANIELLO: . . . of the sixth . . . and like those buccheri vases, with a little low foot which goes on the ground, an edge, and a small cup of eight to nine centimeters [3–3½ inches] in diameter; it’s about five centimeters [2 inches] high. Actually it’s a bit dented because it came out a bit dented, understand?

  MONTICELLI: I understand, but it’s strange, quite a number of these are coming out . . .

  D’ANIELLO: No, these . . . there aren’t . . . but because I’ve never seen them, never seen of . . .

  MONTICELLI: I had two or three lately, but it’s strange . . . [He suspects the cup is fake.]

  D’ANIELLO: Huh . . . if you’ve had them you’re lucky. I’ve never had them.

  MONTICELLI: . . . very strange . . .

  D’ANIELLO: This is the first time I’ve had one. Why, weren’t the others good?

  MONTICELLI: . . . the others . . . well now I’m beginning to be interested. OK, carry on ...

  D’ANIELLO: I don’t know . . . for me, I’m certain where it comes from, understand?

  MONTICELLI: Ah, I see . . .

  D’ANIELLO: Eh, well, if you have . . . start to speak of these problems, then . . . I don’t know what to say . . .

  MONTICELLI: How much? How much?

  D’ANIELLO: Well you don’t have to ask for much; they’re asking thirty million [lire = $30,000].

  Finally, this:DI SIMONE: Those things, those mural things . . . you know that at the moment there’s a law which has come out in America, and it has . . . [This was a reference to the bilateral agreement between the United States and Italy, under which it was agreed that the United States would look out for Italian ancient objects being brought across its borders.]

  CARRELLA [yet another tombarolo]: Yea, no . . . and OK, I know what to do...

  DI SIMONE: Precisely, precisely.

  CARRELLA: If they come out I know where . . .

  DI SIMONE: Exactly, exactly . . . I know, I know . . .

  CARRELLA: . . . I know where to send them.

  This was the fruit of hours of phone taps. Usually, tombaroli—and even more so the capi zona—are careful what they say on the phone but, from time to time, the beauty of their discoveries gets the better of them. It was these slips, and the concurrences between them, that convicted Monticelli.

  In June 2003, Vaman Ghiya was arrested in India after a six-month undercover operation by Indian police. Mr. Ghiya (see the Note on p. 386) was an Indian equivalent of Medici. He was mentioned in the documents James Hodges had leaked to the authors as someone who smuggled Indian antiquities out of the subcontinent and imported them—via companies such as Megavena and Cape Lion Logging in Switzerland—on their way to being sold at Sotheby’s.

  “Operation Blackhole” involved several policemen posing as beggars and rickshaw drivers stationed outside unguarded temples, on the lookout for thieves. Anand Srivastava, the superintendent in charge of the investigation, said that Ghiya had admitted to illegally smuggling more than 100 items that
featured in catalogs of Sotheby’s auctions that were discovered in a raid on his house. In particular, Ghiya was charged with stealing and smuggling a twelfth-century red sandstone statue from the Vilasgarth temple in September 1999, which was sold at Sotheby’s in New York on September 22, 2000.

  In June 2004, Ali Aboutaam was sentenced, in absentia, to fifteen years’ imprisonment in Egypt for artifacts smuggling. This was part of a large initiative by the Egyptians to curb the illicit traffic, and Ali Aboutaam was one of about thirty people rounded up—including an influential politician, customs officers, police colonels, and people in charge of antiquities. The politician was given a thirty-five-year prison term, and nine foreigners—from Switzerland, France, Canada, Kenya, and Morocco—were also convicted, several in their absence.

  Ali Aboutaam considered the verdicts “totally absurd.” He had learned about his conviction, he told reporters, from the press. He had never received any communication from the Egyptian legal system, and although Egyptian magistrates had visited Switzerland three times in the course of their investigations, they had never contacted him. He said the only evidence against him, so far as he could see, was that one of his calling cards had been left at the home of the prominent politician who subsequently received the thirty-five-year jail sentence. Ali Aboutaam admitted to talking on the phone with the politician but added, “There are so many people who contact me to offer me ancient objects.” He said he had been accused by the Egyptian press of smuggling artifacts out of Egypt, but no one had specified what, when, and where such offenses had been committed. Thus, he said, “I have nothing to do with this story.”