New York justice has given Pakistan 192 works of art looted and illegally exported, worth $ 3.4 million, as part of an international survey against an art trafficker imprisoned in India.
Le Monde with AFP
For a decade, American justice has carried out a vast investigation called “Hidden Idol” (“hidden idol”). The latter, who targets a former Manhattan art merchant at Double Indian and American nationality, Subhash Kapoor, led to the restitution in Pakistan, Thursday, November 10, of some 192 works of art, worth 3 , $ 4 million (3.34 million euros).
The New York State prosecutor for the Manhattan district, Alvin Bragg, announced in a statement that he returned these documents to the “Pakistani people” during a ceremony at the Pakistan General Consulate in New York. Among these works, 187 had been the subject of traffic controlled by Mr. Kapoor.
“Subhash Kapoor was one of the most active art traffickers on the planet and (…) We were able to recover thousands of pieces looted by its network”, welcomed the prosecutor Bragg, in S ‘Handering to “continue to continue Mr. Kapoor and his accomplices to make accounts”.
at least 700 pieces rendered to fourteen countries in two years
Arrested in 2011 in Germany, returned to India, where he has since been imprisoned, Subhash Kapoor was still tried and sentenced last week by this Southern Asian country, with another accused, to thirteen years in prison. Charged in 2019 and claimed in New Delhi by New York justice with seven other people for “trading in stolen works of art”, Mr. Kapoor has always denied the accusations brought against him.
The justice of the New York State has been carrying out a large campaign for antiquities to be plundered in the world for two years and which landed in museums and galleries of the megapole: from 2020 to 2021, at least 700 pieces have been returned to fourteen countries, including Cambodia, India, Pakistan, Egypt, Iraq, Greece or Italy.
As part of his large campaign of antiques of antiques, the prosecutor Bragg had returned in September to Egypt sixteen works of art – of which five seized in the spring at the prestigious Metropolitan Museum of Art (MET) – In the Framework of a survey in France on international trafficking involving the former boss of the Louvre Jean-Luc Martinez.
In March, Australia, for its part, returned to India 29 works of ancient stolen, looted and exported illegally, including thirteen pieces – including a bronze statue of the Hindu God Shiva, d ‘ A value of $ 5 million – linked to Mr. Kapoor, according to Canberra.