The ‘predatory’ global economy of looted antiquities

The charging of the Louvre's former director in an antiquities trafficking investigation has shone a light on a vast, transnational criminal problem that remains fiendishly difficult to target.

Ancient burial grounds around the world have increasingly become "open-air supermarkets" for everyone from petty thieves to organized criminals, said Vincent Michel, professor of archaeology at the University of Poitiers in France.

He describes a "sophisticated chain" stretching from sites in unstable places such as Iraq, Syria and Libya - but also many other parts of the world - via transit countries to auction houses and private collectors in Europe and the United States, and increasingly Asia and the Gulf.

It is an illicit trade that "serves mafias, drug traffickers and terrorist groups, abusing collectors and museums with complete impunity", said Michel.

The ex-director of the Louvre in Paris, Jean-Luc Martinez, was charged last week over the purchase of a pink granite stele depicting the pharaoh Tutankhamun and four other historic works for eight million euros ($8.5 million) by the museum's branch in Abu Dhabi.

Martinez, who has strongly denied any wrong-doing, is accused of turning a blind eye to fake certificates of origin for the pieces, a fraud thought to involve several other art experts, according to French investigative weekly Canard Enchaine.

Such allegations are far from a rarity in the art world where the value of looted antiquities is thought to reach into the "tens or even hundreds of millions of euros" per year, according to Michel.

He trains police, judges and customs officials to help counter the trade but resources are notoriously limited in the sector, and he has called for deeper public awareness and a...