Abstract
‘Rescue’ has long provided a justification for the handling of illicit cultural goods, yet the specific consequences of this practice have not been systematically documented. This paper draws on historic, recent and still-emerging cases around the world to assess the resurgent argument that looted antiquities and stolen artefacts should be rescued through purchases made by private collectors. It shows that the practice is promoted by politically exposed persons, who use it for money laundering and reputation laundering; that proceeds from the practice may be received by transnational organised crime groups; and that its social and political acceptability is exploited to facilitate fraud and embezzlement.
 While many of these cases demonstrate complicity on the part of elites and authorities within the societies that are victimised, they are emblematic of the global structure of this enterprise. They also reaffirm the complicity of markets and authorities in the Global North/West in illicit flows of cultural assets that are exceptionally harmful to societies in the Global South/East.
Highlights
Similar perceptions and practices can be seen everywhere from the Philippines (Byrne 2016) to Cyprus (Karageorghis 1999), where looting and smuggling have been linked to organised crime and conflict financing (Hardy 2014a)
One collector and lobbyist for dealers of ancient coins in the United States, Peter Tompa (2014) queried, ‘better burned [than] smuggled?’ Likewise, metal detectorist John Howland suggested that looted antiquities should be characterised as ‘rescued antiquities’ and that it was better for antiquities to be looted than left at risk of acquisition by the Islamic State
Dokolo is married to Angolan businesswoman Isabel dos Santos, the daughter of Angola’s former unelected president José Eduardo dos Santos. He paid a consultancy under Marc Francelet—who had been convicted of dealing in stolen art (New York Times 1979)—to supervise the establishment of a public health service by a company under art dealer Yves Bouvier, who has since been accused of fraud, tax evasion and money laundering (Ventures Africa 2020; Voice of Angola 2018)
Summary
Between the mid-1960s and the mid-2010s, businessman Fernando Paiz built a collection of around 3500 illicit antiquities, which he manages through the Ruta Maya Foundation and displays in museums across Guatemala. Paiz’s heritage work has been characterised as ‘propaganda’ in support of collaboration between big business and government, in light of the proposed incorporation of the public collection of the National Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology into the private Maya Museum of America and the potential displacement of a legally protected craft market for the establishment of the private museum (Gutiérrez and Aguirre 2015) When asked what he would do if he was told that he could not host the public collection, Paiz smiled and said that he had ‘a problem [un problema]’: ‘“no” [was] a word that [was] a little difficult for [him] to understand [“no” es una palabra que a mí me cuesta un poco entender]’ (quoted in Rodríguez 2015). This may not be the case for any of the antiquities that have been purchased by Paiz or his donors, rescue-by-purchase potentially augments the revenue of corrupt officials and organised criminals
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