An American hedge-fund billionaire has surrendered 180 looted and illegally smuggled antiquities valued at $70m and been handed an unprecedented lifetime ban on acquiring other relics as part of an agreement with the Manhattan district attorney’s office.
Michael Steinhardt, one of the world’s largest collectors of ancient art, according to the district attorney, Cyrus Vance Jr, has consistently shown a covetous and insatiable appetite for stolen art crafts.
“For decades, Michael Steinhardt displayed a rapacious appetite for plundered artefacts without concern for the legality of his actions, the legitimacy of the pieces he bought and sold, or the grievous cultural damage he wrought across the globe,’’ Vance said.
The lifetime ban marks the dramatic high-point of an international investigation that officially began in 2017.
The DA’s office said its inquiry found “compelling evidence” that the antiquities were stolen from 11 countries, and that at least 171 passed through traffickers before being bought by Steinhardt.
“His pursuit of ‘new’ additions to showcase and sell knew no geographic or moral boundaries, as reflected in the sprawling underworld of antiquities traffickers, crime bosses, money launderers, and tomb raiders he relied upon to expand his collection,” Vance revealed.
He noted that the antiquities would be returned to their rightful owners rather than be held as evidence for the years necessary to complete a grand-jury indictment and trial.
Steinhardt, who had been chairman of the board of Wisdom Tree Investments before retiring in 2019, denied criminal wrongdoing in resolving the matter, which ended a grand jury investigation into him.
-THE GUARDIAN-
