Thirty Greek antiquities, worth a total of $3.7 million, are being returned to Greece from the United States, according to Ekathimerini.
The items being returned include:
- Marble Aphrodite: Recovered from a storage unit that belonged to the convicted trafficker Robin Symes, where it had been hidden since at least 1999.
- A 4,000-year-old Cycladic marble figure: Seized from a storage unit belonging to a New York-based private collector by the ATU earlier this year.
- A bronze Corinthian helmet: Smuggled out of Greece, given false provenance in Germany, and put on consignment with the New York-based art dealer Michael Ward who pled guilty to Criminal Facilitation in the Fourth Degree and admitted to purchasing stolen antiquities on consignment through his gallery as part of money-laundering scheme allegedly orchestrated by Eugene Alexander.
Greece’s Consul General in New York, Konstantinos Konstantinou, Secretary General of Culture, Georgios Didaskalou, and US Homeland Security Investigations Assistant Special Agent in Charge, Thomas Acocella attended the repatriation ceremony.
Mr Konstantinou said he was “truly grateful” for the efforts of the Manhattan District Attorney Office.
“Their monetary value amounts to millions of dollars but their actual value goes far beyond that. They are priceless for the Greek people,” Konstantinou said.
Source: Ekathimerini
