International Trafficking Operation Recovers 6,400 Artworks and Artifacts in Europe

A collaborative effort between customs andlawenforcement officials from twenty-five countries has led to therecoveryof more than 6,400 cultural objects scattered across Europe. Eighty-five people were arrested in the operation, which was led by Spain’s Guardia Civil and supported by Europol and Interpol. The scheme, titled Operation Pandora, has been carried out annually since 2016 under the auspices of the abovementioned entities, with officials conducting checks at air, land, and sea border crossings, and investigating art institutions, auction houses, and internet concerns.

The countries participating in the eighth iteration of the operation comprised Albania, Austria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Croatia, Cyprus, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Malta, Montenegro, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Serbia, Sweden, Ukraine, and the United Kingdom.

Among the objects recovered were eleven pieces of Scythian gold jewelry worth more than €60 million ($65 million). The items, which were being smuggled into Spain as part of a money-laundering operation, were retrieved by Spanish and Ukrainian police forces working in tandem. Bulgarian customs officials recovered 432 ancient coins that were being trafficked between Turkey and France, while French officials at Charles de Gaulle Airport outside Paris halted the illegal export of a painting by Vietnamese artist Mai Thứ valued at roughly €170,000 ($185,000). In Greece, the country’s police retrieved forty-three ancient amphorae through a pair of investigations, and in Romania, authorities rescued a wooden iconostasis dating from the nineteenth century that had been taken from a church and offered for sale online. Italian Carabinieri seized a contemporary artwork that, if proved authentic, could be worth €150,000 ($163,000); they also secured about two thousand antiquities, among them Neolithic arrowheads and ceramic objects.

A total of 113 criminal and 137 administrative cases are still pending: More arrests and seizures are expected.