Artistic Fraud: A former Louvre manager has been charged with aiding millions of dollars in counterfeit antiquities

According to the indictment, Jean-Luc Martinez ignored documents falsifying the source of some Egyptian artifacts, which were sold for $ 8.5 million in 2016 to the Louvre Museum in Abu Dhabi.

Martinez denies what is attributed to him.

Investigators believe hundreds of items were stolen from Egypt during the Arab Spring in 2011

News agencies

29/05/2022

Sunday, 29 May 2022, 16:44 Updated: 17:37

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A French court last week charged the former director of the Louvre Museum in Paris with fraud when he traded art objects worth millions of dollars, according to a report by the Washington Post.

The director, Jean-Luc Martinez, who denied what was attributed to him, is charged with "involvement in fraud" and "aiding and abetting the forgery of a source of property obtained as a result of a crime or offense," an official source in the French legal system told the newspaper.

According to the indictments, Martinez ignored documents in which the origin of several antiquities from Egypt sold for $ 8.5 million in 2016 to the Louvre Museum in Abu Dhabi was forged.

Among the items of art in question, there is also an estella (stone or log used as a monument) made of pink granite stone on which is engraved the seal of the Egyptian strawberry, the Egyptian disturbance, which reigned over ancient Egypt from 1323 to 1332 BC.

On the high stone, dating to 1327 BC, is also engraved an order of strawberry anach trust that guarantees the protection of the high priest.

Martinez ran the Louvre Museum in Paris from 2013 to this year.

He currently serves as Ambassador to the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs in charge of international cooperation on cultural heritage, a role that includes the prevention of trade in art.

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Jean-Luc Martinez, former director of the Louvre Paris Museum (Photo: AP)

Authorities in France, which opened an investigation into the art trade in 2018, arrested two experts in addition to Martinez, but released them.

Ruben Dib, owner of a German-Lebanese gallery, was arrested in March in Hamburg for brokering the deals in question in the case.

Dib, who was extradited to France, is suspected of several other cases of fraud while trading in art.

According to French researchers, hundreds of artefacts were stolen from Egypt through the Middle East during the 2011 Arab Spring riots.

Apart from Egypt, other countries involved in the investigation due to looting of artefacts are Libya, Syria and Yemen.

"The museum implements a strict international protocol regarding artifacts entering the collection, as defined in the intergovernmental agreement between France and Abu Dhabi signed in 2007," the Louvre Abu Dhabi told the BBC.

"The protocol is in line with the 1970 UNESCO Convention against Illicit Trade in Artifacts, and is the most stringent of all the world's major museums."

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