You hide your identity in the book, presenting yourself as the grandson of an antique dealer and familiar with art galleries. Are you really that or is it also a fake nose?
No, that part of my pedigree is completely true. I am passionate about 19th century pictorial orientalist art and I am a collector of paintings.
You have been at the heart of numerous legal investigations targeting art trafficking in Belgium and in which 65 auction houses and 800 dealers have been involved. Your work denounces the existence of a criminal organization which is corrupting this environment. The accusation is serious.
However, that is what it is all about. The entire profession is of course not affected, but we are far from an isolated case. This organization brings together different actors who all have a defined role even if a single individual can play several at the same time. First you have the parts suppliers. For tribal art, it is mainly Africans who, since the mid-1990s at least, have been traveling to Brussels to supply artifacts, often fake and sometimes looted, to antique dealers who pay them in cash. Alongside, for archaeological objects, there are roughly two networks which branch out in Belgium: that of the Italian “Tombarelli”, experts in the trafficking of stolen Roman antiquities as well as in the manufacture of “modern forgeries” and the more international one , purveyors of coins looted from ancient sites in the Middle East and beyond. Then come the “authenticators”, those who disguise the illicit origin of the objects that arrive at our home. And for the storage of all these pieces, we find everything: from a damp cellar in Sablon to hyper-secure warehouses which house very valuable works on behalf of major players in the market. Finally arrive the sellers, that is to say the merchants, gallery owners and other antique dealers who carry out around half of the transactions between them, either directly, or through intermediaries or via auction rooms and fairs, which helps to “virginize” objects by giving them an appearance of traceability.
“The concerns that overwhelm the world of the art market endanger the very existence of the profession”
Are the operating methods identical to those observed in the area of serious crime?
Yes, less violence. All the mechanisms of white-collar crime serve this illicit traffic. I am talking about the use of straw men, money laundering via shell companies based in tax havens, the compartmentalization of the theft and looting networks of archaeological objects, the systematic concealment, whether produce false invoices or false certificates of authenticity of works, etc.
Faced with these accusations, the sector responds that there may be bad apples within it, but that the profession is mostly respectful of the ethical rules guaranteed by its professional associations. Would we give him a bad trial?
The truth is that it is a totally opaque in-between world. The system operates in a vacuum, crossed by multiple conflicts of interest. These are the same people who buy, sell, assess, control, certify, etc. Moreover, in Belgium, all these professions are neither regulated, nor protected, nor sanctioned by training. Tomorrow, you, me, anyone, can open an antique store, a contemporary art gallery or a sales room as an auctioneer, without anything or anyone stopping us.
Since 2023, Belgium has applied to art dealers the European directive aimed at strengthening the fight against money laundering and the financing of terrorism. Is this progress?
It is, but the real problem lies in the glaring lack of human resources in the control services, customs, economic inspection or federal police. You have at most a handful of investigators who are drowned in procedures and constantly put under pressure by lawyers and lobbyists in this environment.
The art market was already booming 150 years ago
Around thirty legal investigations have been carried out. Do you doubt that they can help clean up the sector?
I am very pessimistic. First, because you have no real convictions or very light ones. No prison terms, only fines or plea bargains. Nothing really dissuasive for people who have the means to pay what is necessary. It is enough to take a walk in Sablon or Antwerp to see that the forgeries, the pieces of tribal and Asian art as well as the archaeological objects illicitly taken out of their territory of origin, have not disappeared from the windows.
What do you recommend?
We must provide the services with real means of investigation and second their officials to a specialized team. Then, as proposed by Irpa (Royal Institute of Artistic Heritage, Editor’s note), it would be appropriate to create a multidisciplinary center of excellence on the provenance of cultural goods. Finally, I am in favor of the adoption of a law which establishes the placing out of commerce of all archaeological objects.
Trafficking in cultural property goes beyond the sole question of market value. Each stolen or looted work loses its heritage function and thus profoundly affects world heritage.
That’s absolutely correct. There is an ethical dimension to which policy makers must pay attention. It is necessary to respond to demands for restitution from countries like Mexico, Libya, Iraq and many others, whose heritage is plundered by traffickers who harm the universal heritage, while financing terrorist groups who pose a direct threat to us.
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