Latest Looting Stories

SecurTek reminds owners of oilfield facilities and equipment in Western Canada to protect their assets, following recent media reports of thefts in Alberta and Saskatchewan. With spring melt well underway, access to remote sites will become easier for criminals looking for opportunities. YORKTON, SASKATCHEWAN (PRWEB) April 10, 2013 SecurTek reminds owners of oilfield facilities and equipment in Western Canada to protect their assets, following recent media reports of thefts in Alberta and...

BELLEVUE, Wash., Oct. 31, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Looting in Brooklyn, N.Y. as Hurricane Sandy moved out underscores the importance of the right to keep and bear arms, especially in an emergency, the Second Amendment Foundation said today. "A story in today's Huffington Post tells about a pharmacy worker who could only watch as people started walking down the street robbing stores," said SAF Executive Vice President Alan Gottlieb. "But so many shopkeepers are defenseless...

GAINESVILLE, Mo., Feb. 16, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Ongoing developments in the Egyptian revolution and its reverberations in the Middle East have the world riveted on this historical event. Beneath the headlines, vacillating reports of vandalism and looting that allegedly took place at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo and other sites have American collectors skeptical of motivations behind the apparent orchestration of news. Spotty and contradictory reports of museum looting had barely surfaced...

SWANSEA, Wales, Jan. 21, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- David Gill, archaeologist, reflects on the extension of the memorandum of understanding between the US and Italy. In 2001 the US and the Republic of Italy made a bilateral agreement that imposed import restrictions on archaeological material derived from Italy. The agreement was renewed in 2006, and in January 2011 the US Department of Homeland Security announced a further five year extension. In recent years over 120 objects, including the...

SWANSEA, Wales, Dec. 17, 2010 /PRNewswire/ -- David Gill, archaeologist, reflects on the recent seizure of antiquities in Spain. In early December it was reported that 85 arrests across seven provinces of Spain had been made as part of Operation Carolina Mosaico. A numismatist and a German national were among those detained. A total of 115 searches were made and some 6,000 Roman and medieval coins, arrowheads, Roman brooches, Visigothic personal adornments, as well as inscribed Arabic...

NEW YORK, Oct. 18 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Nazi records and photographs of the looting of more than 20,000 individual art objects from Jews in France and Belgium are now online in a searchable database, which shows that at least half the objects have not been restituted to their original owners. This new listing - searchable by item, artist, owner, and whether items have been returned - should be consulted by museums, art dealers, and auction houses to determine whether they hold any...

SWANSEA, Wales, Oct. 15 /PRNewswire/ -- David Gill, archaeologist, reflects on the decision to drop the Italian legal case against Marion True, a former curator of the J. Paul Getty Museum. In 2005 Marion True was charged in a case that was linked to the movement of recently surfaced antiquities from Italy to North America. The case has dragged out and in mid-October the judge hearing the case in Rome dropped the case due to the statute of limitation. In 1996 the Getty acquired the private...

SWANSEA, Wales, Sept. 10 /PRNewswire/ -- David Gill, archaeologist, reflects on the request by Greece for the US to place restrictions on the import of archaeological material. Greece considers there to be a serious problem with the looting of archaeological sites. In May 2010 a pair of sixth century BC statues of naked youths ("kouroi") were recovered in a police raid from near Corinth. There is a possibility that they were removed from the nearby site of Tenea. The seizure was made after...

SWANSEA, Wales, Aug. 13 /PRNewswire/ -- David Gill, archaeologist, reflects on the fate of antiquities in the Kuwait National Museum during the 1990 invasion by Iraq. Professor Donny George, the former Director-General of the National Museum in Baghdad, Iraq has released a statement through "Looting Matters" about his role after the invasion of Kuwait. This personal account sheds some light into what was happening in Kuwait immediately after the occupation. George states that in the...

SWANSEA, Wales, July 23 /PRNewswire/ -- David Gill, archaeologist, reflects on the return of 337 antiquities to Italy as part of Operation Andromeda. In December 2008 an investigation into the business connections of a London-based antiquities dealer led police to a storage facility in the Geneva Freeport in Switzerland. The premises, owned by a Japanese dealer, were found to contain around 20,000 objects. The dealer decided to co-operate with the authorities and he agreed to the return of...