There is news that there will be the first hearing for those on trial in connection with a Sicilian group allegedly exporting antiquities. Perhaps the detail that is worrying for collectors of coins is the mention that, during police raids in January 2007, evidence was found that the group were not only "smuggling genuine artefacts" but "they also made false ones to sell" ("Italian archaeology smugglers uncovered", ANSA, January 31, 2007). Apparently,
Equipment was discovered which was clearly used to make 'ancient' coins and vases.Details of three galleries have now appeared. The Art Newspaper reported yesterday ("Italy awaits biggest ever trial of tomb robbers", The Art Newspaper, no. 187, January 28, 2008):
Alessandro Sutera Sardo, the public prosecutor, ... said the “four-celled” network of international collaborators distributed stolen antiquities through intermediaries in Switzerland, Germany, Spain, the UK, and the US, including Munich’s Gorny & Mosch auction house.In 2004 this Munich auction house returned a sculpture stolen from the Amphiaraeion Museum, Greece back in 1991 ("Stolen artefact returns to Greece after resurfacing in Germany", AFP, May 28, 2004).
The artefact unexpectedly resurfaced in May, when German archaeologist Matthias Roecke of the Justus Leibig University in Giessen alerted Greek colleagues that it was on a June sales list of Munich auction house Gorny and Mosch.
