By Aaron Miller-
An American hedge-fund billionaire and philantrophists has surrendered 180 looted and illegally smuggled antiquities valued at $70m, on top of being handed an unprecedented lifetime ban on acquiring other relics as part of an agreement with the Manhattan district attorney’s office.
The antiquities will now be be returned to their rightful owners in Bulgaria, Egypt, Greece, Iraq, Israel, Italy, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Syria and Turkey. Law enforcement in these countries assisted in the probe.
According to a 142-page statement of facts, 138 of the antiquities came from Greece, Israel or Italy, with Steinhardt once acknowledging that a majority of items he bought from one dealer “did not have provenance.”
Vance said his probe, begun in February 2017, found “compelling evidence” that the 180 antiquities were stolen from 11 countries, with at least 171 passing through traffickers before Steinhardt’s purchases.
“For decades, Michael Steinhardt displayed a rapacious appetite for plundered artefacts without concern for the legality of his actions, the legitimacy of the pieces he bought and sold, or the grievous cultural damage he wrought across the globe,” Vance said in a statement.
Steinhardt denied criminal wrongdoing in resolving the matter, which ended a grand jury investigation into him.
His lawyers Andrew Levander and Theodore Wells in a joint statement said Steinhardt was pleased that the investigation has ended, and “items wrongfully taken by others will be returned to their native countries”. They also said Steinhardt may seek compensation from dealers who misled him.
Steinhardt, who turns 81 on Tuesday, built his wealth running the hedge fund Steinhardt Partners, which he closed in 1995 to focus on Jewish philanthropic issues. He is worth $1.2bn, according to Forbes magazine.
Among the antiquities was a 4th century B.C. wrought stag’s head worth $3.5 million that Steinhardt loaned in 1993 to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
The stag’s head had been “Found in Western Turkey,” according to undated handwritten notes in Steinhardt’s records
Michael Steinhardt, one of the world’s largest collectors of ancient art, “displayed a rapacious appetite for plundered artefacts”, the district attorney Cyrus Vance Jr said on Monday.
The seized pieces lacked verifiable provenance before they appeared on the international art market, the office said, adding that it had executed 17 judicially ordered search warrants and conducted joint investigations with law-enforcement authorities in Bulgaria, Egypt, Greece, Iraq, Israel, Italy, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Syria, and Turkey.
The seizure followed a four year international investigation which eventually ended in catching the right man.
Steinhardt, who had been chairman of the board of Wisdom Tree Investments before retiring in 2019, denied criminal wrongdoing in resolving the matter, which ended a grand jury investigation into him.
Vance said: “For decades, Michael Steinhardt displayed a rapacious appetite for plundered artefacts without concern for the legality of his actions, the legitimacy of the pieces he bought and sold or the grievous cultural damage he wrought across the globe.
“His pursuit of ‘new’ additions to showcase and sell knew no geographic or moral boundaries, as reflected in the sprawling underworld of antiquities traffickers, crime bosses, money launderers and tomb raiders he relied upon to expand his collection.”
Vance noted that the antiquities would be returned to their rightful owners rather than be held as evidence for the years necessary to complete a grand-jury indictment and trial.
“This resolution also enables my office to shield the identity of the many witnesses here and abroad whose names would be released at any trial, to protect the integrity of parallel investigations in each of the 11 countries with whom we are conducting joint investigations,” he said.
In March 1993, Steinhardt loaned The Stag’s Head Rhyton to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where it remained until the DA’s office applied for a warrant to seize it.
Under the terms of the agreement, Steinhardt has surrendered The Stag’s Head Rhyton,which dates to 400BCE and appeared without provenance on the market following looting in Milas, Turkey. It is valued at $3.5m.
Other treasures include the Ercolano Fresco which features an infant Hercules strangling a snake sent by Hera to slay him purchased from convicted antiquities traffickers for $650,000 in 1995, the year it had been looted from a Roman villa in the ruins of Herculaneum, near modern Naples. Today, it has been valued at $1m.
Over 15 years, Prof Christos Tsirogiannis, a leading archaeologist, has identified more than 1,550 looted artefacts within auction houses, commercial galleries, private collections and museums. A former senior field archaeologist at the University of Cambridge, he is now an associate professor at the institute of advanced studies at the University of Aarhus in Denmark, and helps to secure the repatriation of antiquities by alerting Interpol and other authorities.
In a statement, Steinhardt’s lawyers said: “Mr Steinhardt is pleased that the district attorney’s years-long investigation has concluded without any charges, and that items wrongfully taken by others will be returned to their native countries.”