New York’s district attorney has returned $19m (£16m) worth of stolen art to Italy.
The 58 pieces include a marble head of the goddess Athena dated 200 BC, worth an estimated $3m alone. The stolen artefacts were sold on to museums and private dealers by convicted looters, said Mr Alvin Bragg.
It is the city’s latest effort to return plundered goods to their country of origin – $66m worth have been returned so far this year. The head of the DA’s antiquities trafficking unit promised there would be “many more seizures and many more repatriations“.
Homeland Security was part of the investigation to seize and repatriate these objects to the Italians – 21 of these came from the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
General Roberto Riccardi said he felt especially happy knowing that these objects would be returning to communities who will know “where we come from, about our history, about our identity”.
Investigators had worked for years to track down the art smugglers’ trails and locate the items that were being repatriated, according to Homeland Security officials.
Credit: bbc.com
