Scandal in France for the accusation of a former president of the Louvre for trafficking in antiquities

Jean-Luc Martinez during a visit to the Louvre museum in 2020. Christophe Ena (AP)

An unusually well-preserved pink granite stela dedicated to Pharaoh Tutankhamun and on display in Abu Dhabi not only holds secrets of ancient Egypt from thousands of years ago.

It could also be the key to a potential scandal, very current, of trafficking in antiquities and falsification of documentation in which prominent figures from the world of culture and archeology in France are allegedly involved.

Institutions and Government tremble before the new curse of Tutankhamun, as the weekly

, which revealed some investigations that already point to the first suspects: the one who was until last summer the president of the most prestigious museum in the world, the Louvre in Paris, Jean-Luc Martinez, has been charged with fraud and money laundering in antiquities trafficking , as confirmed by judicial sources to EL PAÍS this Thursday.

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An investigation uncovers the shady business of antiques in France

For now, little is known about a case that could well have come from the pages of one of the Tintin stories.

Martinez was summoned and detained last Monday at the offices of the Central Office for the Fight against Trafficking in Cultural Property (OCBC, for its acronym in French), sources from the Ministry of the Interior, responsible for this, have also confirmed to this newspaper. specialized police department.

The sources do not enter the reasons, alleging that the investigation is underway.

It is the same reason that the Louvre gives to maintain a silence worthy of a pharaonic tomb and that extends throughout Paris: there has also been no official reaction to a case that threatens to blush the authorities.

Because after leaving his position at the Louvre, in August 2021, Martinez had been appointed ambassador for international cooperation in heritage matters.

The historian is also the author of a report on how to "Protect heritage in situations of armed conflict" requested in 2015 by the then French president, François Hollande.

The suspicions are solid enough for a judge to have charged a figure as respected as Martinez with such serious charges as "complicity in fraud in an organized gang and laundering by lying facilitation of the origin of assets from a crime or crime."

The historian and archaeologist has been released under judicial control.

His lawyers told Agence France Presse on Thursday that Martinez "firmly rejects his accusation in this case," but that for the time being he will only speak in court, confident that "his good faith will be established." .

Two other well-known Egyptologists who had been arrested along with Martinez on Monday were released without charge, at least for the time being.

They are Vincent Rondot, current curator of the Louvre's Egyptian antiquities department, and Olivier Perdu, who holds the chair of Egyptology at the Collège de France.

The investigations are part of a broad international investigation into antiquities trafficking that would have affected the Louvre in Abu Dhabi and the Metropolitan Museum in New York.

Several art dealers and experts are suspected of having produced false documents to fabricate the origins of objects looted during the Arab Spring, including the Stela of Tutankhamun and four other pieces that the Abu Dhabi Louvre acquired in 2016 for a total of 15, 2 million euros.

Martinez, Rondot and Perdu were responsible,

recalls , for validating the certificates of authenticity on the origin of the pieces purchased by Abu Dhabi.

These certificates are linked to two well-known members of the antiquities world suspected of having trafficked other antiquities: archeology specialist Christophe Kunicki and German art dealer Roben Dib.

Kunicki, who worked for the Bergé & Associés sales house of businessman Pierre Bergé, who died in 2017, has been tracked by the authorities since the sale in 2017 of the golden Nedjemankh sarcophagus, then sold to the Metropolitan Museum of New York for 3, 5 million euros.

Kunicki assured that the work had legitimately left Egypt in 1971, but an investigation proved that it had been stolen during the uprising against President Hosni Moubarak in 2011, and was returned to the country in 2019, recalls Efe.

According to the

, the three French experts now under investigation, at the very least, "closed their eyes to the false certificates."

Professor at the Paul-Valéry University of Montpellier Marc Gabolde, a great specialist in Tutankhamun's France, began to investigate the Pink Granite Stele when he learned of its sale to Abu Dhabi.

In 2018, he warned the Louvre that "the circumstances of that monument's departure from Egypt, via a German merchant marine captain from Bremen in the 1930s, seemed unclear to me," he told the

.

It was a story similar to the one Kunicki provided to the New York museum to sell Nedjemankh's sarcophagus.

He received no response from the responsible French authorities, that is, Martinez and the other two experts.

In February 2020, Kunicki was charged and placed under judicial control along with her husband, the art dealer Richard Samper, by the same judge who has now formally accused the former president of the Parisian Louvre.

From

, the expert Gabolde says he wants to believe in the "good faith" of Martinez and his two colleagues under investigation.

After all, he told the newspaper, "Conservatives and Egyptologists are victims, not accomplices, of traffickers."

Justice will have the last word.