Richard Beale/Roma Numismatics Fake Provenance Case

Sarah Saey & the BBC Arabic Investigations team, 'Auctioneer exposed by BBC admits illegally selling rare ancient coins' BBC News Arabic 27th August 2023.

A British auctioneer who was at the centre of a BBC investigation has pleaded guilty at a New York court to a series of charges in connection with unlawful sales of rare ancient coins. Richard Beale, director of London-based auction house Roma Numismatics, admitted two counts of conspiracy and three counts of criminal possession of stolen property, court documents show. He was accused of falsifying the provenance of the most expensive coin ever auctioned - the gold Eid Mar, which fetched $4.19m (£3.29m) in 2020 - and an ancient silver Sicily Naxos Coin, which sold at the same time for $292,000. He has also admitted to falsifying the provenance of a number of silver Alexander the Great decadrachms from the "Gaza Hoard", which were sold by Roma Numismatics and whose suspicious origin was brought to light by a BBC News Arabic documentary in 2020.

Beale is next due to appear before the New York Supreme Criminal Court in March.

Half Full, or Half Empty: "British Museum recovers some of 2,000 stolen items"

Sean Seddon, ' British Museum recovers some of 2,000 stolen items' BBC News 26.08.2023.

About 2,000 items are thought to have been stolen from the British Museum, but some of the missing treasures have started to be recovered, chairman George Osborne has confirmed.[...] The museum, one of the UK's most prestigious cultural institutions, has been under pressure since revealing earlier this month that a number of treasures were reported "missing, stolen or damaged".[...] Mr Osborne - who was appointed as chair of the museum in June 2021 - told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that "we have already started to recover some of the stolen items". "We believe we have been the victim of thefts over a long period of time and frankly more could have been done to prevent them," he said. Asked where the missing items were located, he said "some members of the antiquarian community are actively cooperating with us" and that recoveries so far were a "silver lining to a dark cloud". He said he was confident that "honest people" will return items found to have been stolen, but acknowledged that "others may not".

 

Unlucky

 
A hundred billion galaxies
Each with a billion stars
And Three trillion planets,
Yet in all that mind-boggling complexity
Only one foolish corner was Brexity

The Articles Ten

This is pretty easy to remember, because they both have the same number and similar content:

Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property.Paris, France14 November 1970

Article 10
The States Parties to this Convention undertake:
(a) To restrict by education, information and vigilance, movement of cultural property illegally removed from any State Party to this Convention and, as appropriate for each country, oblige antique dealers, subject to penal or administrative sanctions, to maintain a register recording the origin of each item of cultural property, names and addresses of the supplier, description and price of each item sold and to inform the purchaser of the cultural property of the export prohibition to which such property may be subject;
(b) To endeavour by educational means to create and develop in the public mind a realization of the value of cultural property and the threat to the cultural heritage created by theft, clandestine excavations and illicit exports.

Convention for the Protection of the Archaeological Heritage of Europe (revised) (Valletta, 1992)

Article 10
Each Party undertakes:
i to arrange for the relevant public authorities and for scientific institutions to pool information on any illicit excavations identified;
ii to inform the competent authorities in the State of origin which is a Party to this Convention of any offer suspected of coming either from illicit excavations or unlawfully from official excavations, and to provide the necessary details thereof;
iii to take such steps as are necessary to ensure that museums and similar institutions whose acquisition policy is under State control do not acquire elements of the archaeological heritage suspected of coming from uncontrolled finds or illicit excavations or unlawfully from official excavations;
iv as regards museums and similar institutions located in the territory of a Party but the acquisition policy of which is not under State control:
    a to convey to them the text of this (revised) Convention;
    b to spare no effort to ensure respect by the said museums and institutions 
    for the  principles set out in paragraph 3 above;
v to restrict, as far as possible, by education, information, vigilance and co-operation, the transfer of elements of the archaeological heritage obtained from uncontrolled finds or illicit excavations or unlawfully from official excavations.

Now, I reckon this blog is doing what it can to get the message out, but this is my hobby. Ask yourselves which of the archaeological organizations you pay for directly (through subscriptions) and indirectly (come out of other pools of money) are actually ACTIVELY doing very much of that education. outereach or whatever they want to call it. Will my Mum back in rural Homeshire hear the truth about metal detecting, the depletion of the archaeological record and the true face of the antiquities market and the harm they are all doing from the local (allegedly public-facing) archaeological organizations of the UK or from her son in far-off Poland? Come on archies, get on with doing something about this.