Pin. The investigation into a vast traffic of looted antiquities in the Near and Middle East is now focusing on the role of the former president and director of the Louvre, Jean-Luc Martinez, indicted for money laundering and complicity in fraud in organized band. At the head of the largest museum in the world for eight years, Jean-Luc Martinez was placed in police custody on Monday at the premises of the Central Office for the Fight against Trafficking in Cultural Property (OCBC), according to a source close to the case.
He was indicted late Wednesday afternoon for “complicity in fraud in an organized gang and laundering by false facilitation of the origin of property from a crime or misdemeanor”, said a source. court, before being placed under judicial control.
He disputes the alleged facts
“Jean-Luc Martinez disputes with the greatest firmness his questioning in this case”, reacted to AFP his lawyers Me Jacqueline Laffont and Me François Artuphel. “He reserves his statements for the time being for the courts and has no doubt that his good faith will be established,” they added.
The former head of the Louvre from 2013 to the summer of 2021 is now ambassador for international cooperation in the field of heritage. Two eminent French Egyptologists, who had also been taken into custody on Monday, have meanwhile been released without prosecution at this stage, the judicial source said.
Fake certificates of origin?
According to chained duck, who had announced the custody, the investigators are trying to find out if Jean-Luc Martinez would have “closed his eyes” to false certificates of origin of five pieces of Egyptian antiquity acquired “for several tens of millions of euros” by the Louvre Abu Dhabi, the branch of the Parisian museum in the capital of the United Arab Emirates.
Among these pieces is a pink granite stele engraved with the name of King Tutankhamun, “an exceptional object in more than one way”, according to Egyptologist Marc Gabolde quoted by the daily The world. It was he who alerted the two Egyptologists to the dubious provenance of the stele, in a note in early 2019, according to the daily. The two specialists would then have transmitted the document to Jean-Luc Martinez. Asked by AFP, the management of the Louvre did not wish to react.
Hundreds of coins looted
A preliminary investigation into suspicions of trafficking in antiquities from unstable countries in the Near and Middle East was discreetly opened in July 2018 by the National Court in charge of the fight against organized crime (Junalco) of the Paris prosecutor’s office.
Since February 2020, an investigating judge has been in charge of an open judicial investigation for concealment of theft in an organized gang, criminal association, money laundering and fraud in an organized gang, forgery and use of forgery as well as omission of mention by the seller on the register of movable objects. This traffic would concern hundreds of pieces and would involve several tens of millions of euros, according to sources close at the time.
Trafficking in works of art
The facts had been revealed duringa resounding crackdown in the hushed environment of the Parisian art and antiques market in June 2020. An expert in Mediterranean archeology, Christophe Kunicki, and her husband Richard Semper, a merchant, had been indicted for “organized gang scams, criminal association and organized gang money laundering” and placed under judicial control.
These two respected figures in the world of antiquities in the French capital are suspected of having “laundered” archaeological objects looted in several countries plagued by instability since the beginning of the 2010s and the emergence of the Arab Spring: Egypt, Libya , Yemen or Syria. Last March, Roben Dib, owner of a gallery in Hamburg (Germany), was indicted and remanded in custody.
The “disturbed” art and antiques market environment
The OCBC is seeking to determine the conditions for the acquisition by the Louvre Abu Dhabi, through this German-Lebanese gallery owner, of the five antiquities illegally taken out of Egypt, according to the Chained Duck. The announcement of this investigation had troubled the middle of the art market and antique dealers in Paris.
The names of Christophe Kunicki and Richard Semper had already been mentioned in the affair of the sarcophagus of the priest Nedjemankh. Sold to the Met in New York in 2017 for 3.5 million euros (about 4 million dollars) by Christophe Kunicki, this sarcophagus was finally solemnly returned to Egypt in 2019. An investigation had established that the object had was stolen in 2011, the year of the uprising against President Hosni Mubarak.