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United StatesUS justice returns 192 looted works of art to Pakistan
For the past two years, New York City Justice has campaigned to restore plundered antiquities around the world and found in its museums.
State attorney for the borough of Manhattan, Alvin Bragg, announced Thursday that he had returned the artwork to the “Pakistani people” at a ceremony in New York.
AFP
New York justice returned 192 looted and illegally exported works of art worth $ 3.4 million (SFr 3.3 million) to Pakistan on Thursday, as part of a ten-year international investigation against an Indian and American art dealer incarcerated in India.
For two years, the justice of the State of New York has been carrying out a vast campaign to restore the antiquities looted around the world and which have landed in the museums and galleries of the megalopolis: from 2020 to 2021 at least 700 pieces were returned in 14 countries, including Cambodia, India, Pakistan, Egypt, Iraq, Greece or Italy.
State attorney for the borough of Manhattan, Alvin Bragg, announced Thursday in a statement that he had returned 192 works of art to the “Pakistani people” during a ceremony at the Consulate General of Pakistan in New York. Of these pieces, 187 had been trafficked by a former Manhattan art dealer with dual Indian and American nationality, Subhash Kapoor.
Thousands of looted coins
Subhash Kapoor was the target for a decade of a vast investigation into American justice called “Hidden Idol”. Arrested in 2011 in Germany, returned to India where he has been incarcerated ever since, was re-tried and sentenced last week by this South Asian country, with another defendant, to 13 years in prison.
Indicted in 2019 and claimed in New Delhi by the New York justice with seven other people for “conspiring to traffick stolen works of art”, Subhash Kapoor has always denied the charges against him. “Subhash Kapoor was one of the most active art traffickers on the planet and (…) we managed to recover thousands of looted pieces from his network”, welcomed prosecutor Bragg pledging to “continue to prosecute Subhash Kapoor and his accomplices for bring them to account ”.
In March, Australia returned 29 ancient works of art stolen, looted and illegally exported to India, including 13 pieces – including a $ 5 million bronze statue of the Hindu god Shiva – relating to Subhash Kapoor according to Canberra.
As part of his major antiques restitution campaign, prosecutor Bragg returned 16 works of art to Egypt in September – including five seized in the spring by the prestigious Metropolitan Museum of Art (Met) – as part of a investigation in France on international trafficking involving the former head of the Louvre, Jean-Luc Martinez.
(AFP)
