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Beyond “Due Diligence”: Closing Loopholes in the Global Antiquities Trade

October 9, 2025

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By Sarah Boxer

The global antiquities trade runs on paperwork. Export licenses, ownership histories, and dealer assurances are meant to guarantee legitimacy. Yet the Giacomo Medici and Gianfranco Becchina archives revealed what this paperwork often conceals: thousands of looted antiquities, photographed with soil still clinging to them, then funneled through traffickers, intermediaries, and donors into the collections of the world’s most prestigious museums. [1] Important individual and institutional collectors, like the Metropolitan Museum of Art (the “Met”) and the Getty, acquired these objects on the strength of falsified records that provided a veneer of compliance while masking criminal origins.[2]

The disclosures prompted high-profile restitutions and several criminal convictions, most notably that of Medici himself.[3] Yet their broader impact was reputational rather than structural. Objects tied to Medici and Becchina’s looting networks continue to circulate in the art market and appear in museums, demonstrating the persistence of loopholes in acquisition practices.[4] Existing compliance frameworks have often proved inadequate to deter further abuses.[5]

The 1970 United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (“UNESCO”) Convention was intended to establish safeguards by obligating States Parties, and through them museums and cultural institutions, to ensure that antiquities were not stolen, looted, or unlawfully exported.[6] In practice, however, enforcement remains uneven and the antiquities trade continues to be largely self-regulated.[7] Furthermore, leading museums have historically acted in response to scandal or prosecutorial intervention rather than treating provenance verification as an ongoing compliance obligation.[8]

These patterns demonstrate the fragility of the current regulatory framework. Although international conventions and domestic statutes exist, their practical effect has been limited, leaving museums to rely on uneven standards of “due diligence.”[9] The persistence of these gaps is evident in case studies involving the Met, the Getty, and the Louvre, where archival evidence linking objects to convicted traffickers has collided with inconsistent legal and institutional responses.[10] This article examines that disjunction, analyzing how legal standards have been applied, how museums have responded in practice, and what reforms are necessary to close the loopholes that allow illicit antiquities to remain in leading collections.

The 1970 UNESCO Convention

Adopted in 1970, the UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property signified the first and most comprehensive international effort to address the problem of looted antiquities.[11] The Convention requires States Parties to prevent museums, within their territories, from acquiring cultural property that has been illegally exported from another State Party. It also requires States Parties to facilitate restitution when stolen or unlawfully removed objects are identified.[12]

Additionally, the Convention extends provenance obligations to the market more broadly. Article 10 directs dealers to maintain registers recording the origin of objects, the identity of suppliers, and the details of sales, and obligates dealers to inform purchasers of any export restrictions.[13] For museums, this framework signals that acquisitions should be supported by verifiable documentation rather than by reliance on dealer assurances or incomplete ownership histories.

In practice, the Convention’s impact was limited by uneven enforcement and narrow domestic implementation. When the United States and the United Kingdom ratified the treaty, they did so with conditions that weakened its preventive force.[14] Instead of requiring museums and market actors to verify provenance before acquiring objects, these governments emphasized restitution procedures, meaning the return of objects only once they were proven to have been stolen or illegally exported.

This flexibility allowed museums to continue acquiring objects with gaps in provenance, so long as paperwork appeared plausible. The revelations contained in the Medici and Becchina archives demonstrate how falsified records could satisfy institutional expectations, exposing the fragility of a system that depends heavily on good faith and self-policing rather than binding compliance mechanisms.

A more stringent framework exists in the 1995 International Institute for the Unification of Private Law (“UNIDROIT”) Convention on Stolen or Illegally Exported Cultural Objects, which narrows the defense of “good faith” acquisition by requiring purchasers to demonstrate due diligence before claiming compensation.[15] However, key art market countries, including the United States, the United Kingdom, and Switzerland, have not ratified it.[16]

National laws have compounded these gaps. In the United States, the Cultural Property Implementation Act (“CPIA”) of 1983 incorporates UNESCO but restricts restitution largely to cases where bilateral agreements exist, leaving many categories of objects outside its scope.[17] In the United Kingdom, the Dealing in Cultural Objects (Offences) Act 2003 criminalizes transactions involving tainted antiquities but requires proof of dishonesty, a high bar that rarely results in successful prosecutions.[18] These frameworks create an environment in which institutions can claim compliance while relying on minimal provenance records or vague assurances of legitimacy.

At the same time, more robust enforcement initiatives have emerged at the domestic level. In New York, the Antiquities Trafficking Unit of the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office has demonstrated a proactive approach by seizing objects tied to convicted traffickers and negotiating returns to source countries.[19] Since its creation, the Unit has recovered thousands of artifacts, including high-profile pieces from the Met and private collections, setting a model for investigative cooperation between prosecutors and cultural authorities.[20] Parallel institutional reforms, such as the establishment of dedicated provenance research departments, signal a recognition that compliance requires more than formal adherence to treaties.[21]

Case Studies in Institutional Vulnerabilities

Recent antiquities trafficking scandals make the limits of provenance regimes clear. At the Met, reporters identified more than 1,000 objects in the collections once owned by individuals convicted or indicted for antiquities crimes, including Gianfranco Becchina, Subhash Kapoor, Douglas Latchford, and Robert Hecht.[22] Fewer than half of these works have documentation explaining how they left their countries of origin, despite long-standing export laws in places such as Nepal and India.[23] In the Met’s catalog of more than 250 Nepali and Kashmiri antiquities, only three contained origin records, even though Nepal has prohibited the export of religious artifacts since 1956.[24] Such gaps facilitated the display of items like the Shreedhar Vishnu, stolen from a temple in Bungmati in the 1980s, donated to the Met a decade later, and only identified for restitution in 2021.[25]

Investigations have also revealed how prestigious institutions accepted objects on the basis of forged or fabricated paperwork. In 2017, the Met acquired a gilded Egyptian coffin with a counterfeit export license; the piece was prominently displayed at the 2018 Met Gala before prosecutors determined it had been looted and ordered its return.[26] In 2021, authorities seized more than one hundred pieces linked to billionaire donor Michael Steinhardt, whose antiquities, valued at over $70 million, were tied to looting across multiple countries.[27] The seizures included works previously exhibited at the Met. Nonetheless, a gallery bearing Steinhardt’s name remains.[28] These examples highlight the degree to which museums relied on the reputational capital of donors and dealers, rather than on verifiable provenance.

The Louvre has faced similar scrutiny. Italian authorities have sought the return of seven antiquities in its collection, including a fifth-century amphora, attributed to the Berlin Painter, and a krater, by the Antimenes Painter. Both works were tied to the Medici and Becchina archives, where photographic evidence traced their passage through convicted traffickers. Four pieces were identified by former archaeologists of Italy’s Ministry of Culture. Christos Tsirogiannis, a prominent University of Cambridge archeologist, subsequently confirmed the Berlin Painter amphora within Medici’s Geneva trove.[29] Louvre director Laurence des Cars acknowledged that works with dubious provenance constitute “a stain in the collections of the Louvre.”[30]

Even liquidation proceedings have reintroduced looted material into the market. In 2017, two marble lekythoi once handled by Gianfranco Becchina surfaced at the Frieze Masters fair in London, offered by Basel dealer Jean-David Cahn.[31] They were being sold on behalf of the Swiss canton of Basel-Stadt, which had received portions of Becchina’s seized stock after criminal proceedings. Christos Tsirogiannis, working from confiscated photographic archives, identified the vases as freshly looted. Despite this evidence, the attempted sale was cleared by both Swiss prosecutors and the Art Loss Register. The episode illustrates how the combination of jurisdictional gaps and low evidentiary thresholds can launder trafficked antiquities back into the market, presenting them as legitimate when their illicit origins remain visible in archival records.

Together, these episodes reveal that “due diligence” is often reactive and malleable, invoked to rationalize acquisitions or sanctioned resales rather than to prevent them. International conventions and domestic statutes provide a framework, but their uneven application has allowed museums and markets to continue operating in ways that legitimize objects tied to known trafficking networks.

Closing the Loopholes

The failures revealed by the Medici and Becchina archives make clear that existing frameworks leave too much to discretion. International conventions were intended to establish minimum standards of provenance verification, yet their effectiveness has depended on the willingness of market institutions to internalize them. Where museums have acted, it has often been under pressure from scandal or prosecutorial seizure rather than from binding compliance obligations.

Recent enforcement efforts demonstrate how a more proactive model could operate. In New York, the Antiquities Trafficking Unit of the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office has built cases that trace objects from looting networks through the hands of dealers and into major museums, compelling returns to source countries. Thousands of artifacts have been seized in this way.[32] By linking archival evidence to legal enforcement, the unit has created a mechanism that museums themselves had long resisted.

Institutional reforms point in the same direction but are subject to structural limits. The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the Museum of Modern Art (“MoMA”), the Met, and other leading museums have established provenance research departments, signaling recognition that reliance on donor reputations or dealer assurances is no longer tenable.[33] Yet directors have testified before Congress that systematic provenance research is prohibitively expensive, and many institutions continue to allocate resources only when litigation or public controversy forces their hand.[34] The result is a patchwork, in which some museums develop expertise while others defer to lawyers, leaving thousands of objects with unresolved gaps.

Recent European Union (EU) reforms illustrate how these gaps might be narrowed at the supranational level. Regulation (EU) 2019/880 on the import of cultural goods, which entered into force in 2025, establishes stricter import documentation and provenance requirements for antiquities entering the European Union.[35] The Regulation aims to prevent trafficked objects from being laundered into the market through member states with weaker national controls by shifting the burden of proof onto importers and creating an EU-wide licensing system.[36] Its effectiveness, however, will depend on consistent implementation across jurisdictions and the willingness of museums, dealers, and customs authorities to treat provenance verification as a binding compliance obligation.

The United States has also expanded Cultural Property Agreements under the 1983 Cultural Property Implementation Act, using import restrictions to bar undocumented objects from entering the market. These agreements close borders to high-risk antiquities while allowing documented exchanges, placing the burden of proof on importers rather than on under-resourced source nations.[37] The approach recognizes that the art market’s center of gravity lies not in looted sites but in consumer states, which have the greatest leverage to deter trafficking.

Closing the loopholes therefore requires more than exhortation to “due diligence.” It requires sustained funding for provenance research, transparency through accessible databases of seized archives, and the consistent application of import restrictions that strip the market of its gray zones.[38] Museums cannot rely indefinitely on prosecutors, journalists, or activists to identify tainted works. Unless provenance verification is treated as a compliance obligation supported by legal and financial infrastructure, the cycle documented in the Medici and Becchina archives will continue.

Conclusion

The Medici and Becchina archives made visible the mechanics of laundering: looted objects photographed with soil still on them, recycled through forged export licenses, and absorbed into permanent collections under donor names or dealer reputations. The same mechanisms remain intact. Museums still weigh the cost of provenance research against the risk of scandal, leaving thousands of objects catalogued without origin records. Prosecutors in New York have shown that when archives are systematically matched against collections, large-scale restitutions follow. Cultural Property Agreements have closed some borders to undocumented objects, but enforcement remains dependent on political will and resource allocation. The cycle first traced in the Medici photographs continues, sustained by gaps in funding, law, and institutional practice, and by the assumption that identifying looting is the work of others rather than a basic condition of stewardship. The only way to break it is to treat provenance research as a mandatory compliance obligation, underwritten by legal enforcement and financial support, rather than a discretionary response to scandal.

About the Author

Sarah Boxer is completing her J.D. at Harvard Law School after earning her LL.M. at the University of Cambridge, where she focused on international law and cultural heritage. She has worked for the British Institute of International and Comparative Law and the European Court of Human Rights, contributing to projects on international human rights, art restitution, antiquities looting, and heritage-related crimes. Her interests center on the protection of cultural heritage in conflict, the restitution of looted art—including Nazi-era art claims—the prevention of illicit antiquities trafficking, and the role of dispute resolution and transitional justice in post-conflict societies.

Further Reading List

Select References:

  1. See Peter Watson & Cecilia Todeschini, The Medici Conspiracy: The Illicit Journey of Looted Antiquities—from Italy’s Tomb Raiders to the World’s Greatest Museums (2006); See also Barbara McMahon, Getty Museum Knowingly Bought Archaeological Treasures Stolen from Italy, Investigation Claims, The Guardian (Sept. 27, 2005), available at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/sep/27/usa.arts.

    ↑

  2. Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, D.A. Bragg Announces Return of 42 Antiquities to the People of Italy (Aug. 8, 2023), available at https://www.manhattanda.org/d-a-bragg-announces-return-of-42-antiquities-to-the-people-of-italy./ ↑
  3. United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Case Law Database: Giacomo Medici (Italy) (last updated Dec. 7, 2011), available at https://sherloc.unodc.org/cld/case-law-doc/criminalgroupcrimetype/ita/2011/sentenza_n.287204.html?lng=en ↑
  4. David W.J. Gill & Christos Tsirogiannis, Polaroids from the Medici Dossier: Continued Sightings on the Market, 5 J. Art Crime 17 (2011), available at https://traffickingculture.org/app/uploads/2014/11/Polaroids-from-the-Medici-Dossier.pdf. ↑
  5. Katarzyna Januszkiewicz, Retroactivity in the 1970 UNESCO Convention: Cases of the United States and Australia, 41 Brook. J. Int’l L. 291 (2015), available at https://brooklynworks.brooklaw.edu/bjil/vol41/iss1/7/. ↑
  6. Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property, Nov. 14, 1970, 823 U.N.T.S. 231 (entered into force Apr. 24, 1972), available at https://www.unesco.org/en/legal-affairs/convention-means-prohibiting-and-preventing-illicit-import-export-and-transfer-ownership-cultural. ↑
  7. Erin Thompson, Successes and Failures of Self-Regulatory Regimes Governing Museum Holdings of Nazi-Looted Art and Looted Antiquities, 37 Colum. J.L. & Arts 379 (2014). ↑
  8. Torey Akers, Amid Mounting Scrutiny of Its Collecting Practices, Metropolitan Museum Will Form Provenance Research Squad, The Art Newspaper (May 10, 2023), available at https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2023/05/10/metropolitan-museum-provenance-research-squad. ↑
  9. The Archaeological Institute of America, Principles for Museum Acquisitions of Antiquities, (March 2006), available at https://www.archaeological.org/pdfs/archaeologywatch/museumpolicy/AIA_Principles_Musuem_Acquisition.pdf ↑
  10. Liliana Mason, Museum Piracy: The Illicit Trafficking of Cultural Property, Catalyst (Dec. 15, 2023), available at https://catalystmcgill.com/museum-piracy-the-illicit-trafficking-of-cultural-property/ ↑
  11. Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property, Nov. 14, 1970, 823 U.N.T.S. 231 (entered into force Apr. 24, 1972), available at https://www.unesco.org/en/legal-affairs/convention-means-prohibiting-and-preventing-illicit-import-export-and-transfer-ownership-cultural. ↑
  12. Ibid. ↑
  13. Ibid. ↑
  14. Ibid. ↑
  15. UNIDROIT Convention on Stolen or Illegally Exported Cultural Objects, June 24, 1995, 34 I.L.M. 1322 (entered into force July 1, 1998), available at https://www.unidroit.org/instruments/cultural-property/1995-convention/. ↑
  16. Lyndel V. Prott, The Arguments for and Against UNIDROIT, The Art Newspaper, Jan. 1997, available at https://www.theartnewspaper.com/1997/01/01/the-arguments-for-and-against-unidroit. ↑
  17. Convention on Cultural Property Implementation Act, Pub. L. No. 97-446, tit. III, 96 Stat. 2329 (1983) (codified as amended at 19 U.S.C. §§ 2601–13), available at https://eca.state.gov/files/bureau/97-446.pdf. ↑
  18. Dealing in Cultural Objects (Offences) Act 2003, c. 27 (UK), available at https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/27. ↑
  19. Matthew Bogdanos, Interview with Matthew Bogdanos About the Antiquities Trafficking Unit, Center for Art Law, (Oct. 22, 2023), available at https://itsartlaw.org/art-law/interview-with-matthew-bogdanos-about-the-antiquities-trafficking-unit/. ↑
  20. Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, D.A. Bragg Announces Return of 11 Antiquities to the People of Egypt (May 30, 2025), available at https://manhattanda.org/d-a-bragg-announces-return-of-11-antiquities-to-the-people-of-egypt/. ↑
  21. Francesca Aton, How the Met and Other Major US Museums Are Approaching Provenance Research, ARTnews (Feb. 28, 2024), available at https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/how-metropolitan-museum-of-art-us-museums-provenance-research-1234697945/. ↑
  22. Spencer Woodman, Malia Politzer, Delphine Reuter & Namrata Sharma, More than 1000 Artifacts in Metropolitan Museum of Art Catalog Linked to Alleged Looting and Trafficking Figures, Int’l Consortium of Investigative Journalists (Mar. 20, 2023), available at https://www.icij.org/investigations/hidden-treasures/more-than-1000-artifacts-in-metropolitan-museum-of-art-catalog-linked-to-alleged-looting-and-trafficking-figures/. ↑
  23. Ibid. ↑
  24. Ibid. ↑
  25. Ibid. ↑
  26. Ibid. See also New York Met Museum Returns Stolen Ancient Egyptian Coffin, BBC News (Sept. 26, 2019), available at https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-49837860. ↑
  27. Tom Mashberg, Michael Steinhardt, Billionaire, Surrenders $70 Million in Stolen Relics, The New York Times, (Dec. 6, 2021), available at https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/06/arts/design/steinhardt-billionaire-stolen-antiquities.html ↑
  28. The Met, Greek Art: Sixth Century B.C., Judy & Michael H. Steinhardt Gallery, Gallery 154, available at https://maps.metmuseum.org/poi?_gl=1%2Aptte6e%2A_ga%2AMjk2MzAzMzczLjE3MDE4NzY3NzM.%2A_ga_Y0W8DGNBTB%2AMTcwMzA5NTIxNC40MS4xLjE3MDMwOTUyMjIuMC4wLjA.&feature=5c47580411418c3410d1ef21a8e6023c&floor=1&lang=en-GB&screenmode=base&search=403#17/40.779448/-73.963517/-61. ↑
  29. Gareth Harris, Italy Seeks the Return of Seven Possibly Looted Works from the Louvre, The Art Newspaper (July 17, 2023), available at https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2023/07/17/italy-seeks-the-return-of-seven-possibly-looted-works-from-the-louvre. ↑
  30. Ibid. ↑
  31. Howard Swains, Allegedly Looted Antiquities on Sale at London Frieze Masters Art Fair, The Guardian (Oct. 22, 2017), available at https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2017/oct/22/looted-antiquities-allegedly-on-sale-at-london-frieze-masters-art-fair. ↑
  32. Ariel Sabar, The Tomb Raiders of the Upper East Side: Inside the Manhattan DA’s Antiquities Trafficking Unit, The Atlantic (Nov. 23, 2021), available at https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/12/bogdanos-antiquities-new-york/620525/ ↑
  33. Francesca Aton, How the Met and Other Major US Museums Are Approaching Provenance Research, ARTnews (Feb. 28, 2024), available at https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/how-metropolitan-museum-of-art-us-museums-provenance-research-1234697945/. ↑
  34. Jason Edward Kaufman, Provenance Research Is Too Expensive, Museums Tell Congress, The Art Newspaper (Aug. 31, 2006), available at https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2006/09/01/provenance-research-is-too-expensive-museums-tell-congress. ↑
  35. Regulation 2019/880, of the European Parliament and of the Council, Apr. 17, 2019, on the introduction and the import of cultural goods, 2019 O.J. (L 151) 1 (EU). Available at https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A32019R0880&qid=1639488073938. ↑
  36. James Ferrer, New EU Regulation on Cultural Goods: Risk Implications and Guidance, Lockton, (November 3, 2024), available at https://global.lockton.com/gb/en/news-insights/new-eu-regulation-on-cultural-goods-risk-implications-and-guidance. ↑
  37. Antiquities Coalition, Closing U.S. Markets to Illicit Antiquities (Sept. 16, 2024), available at https://theantiquitiescoalition.org/developing-implementing-solutions/closing-u-s-markets-to-illicit-antiquities/. ↑
  38. Ibid. ↑

Disclaimer: This article is for educational purposes only and is not meant to provide legal advice. Readers should not construe or rely on any comment or statement in this article as legal advice. For legal advice, readers should seek a consultation with an attorney.

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