A Turkish deer head cup, an ancient Greek terracotta coffin, three Israeli death masks dating back to 7000 BC... These are just the tip of the iceberg of 180 artifacts illegally held by New York billionaire, former hedge fund manager and philanthropist Michael Steinhardt. Recently, he handed over all these illegal gains to the Manhattan District Attorney's Office in New York. The procuratorate issued him a lifetime ban, restricting him from purchasing and collecting any cultural relics, which was valid for life. It was an exchange agreement between him and the public prosecutor's office to surrender cultural relics and restraining orders in exchange for the right to be exempt from criminal proceedings. The Manhattan District Attorney General said the artifacts would be returned to the "rightful owners" of their country of origin.
Michael Steinhardt
"For decades, Michael Steinhardt has shown a voracious appetite for looted artifacts, never considering the legitimacy of his actions, the legitimacy of the artworks he buys and sells, or the serious cultural damage he has done around the world." "His quest to display and sell 'new' objects has no territorial or moral boundaries, and he joins a vast underground world of antique dealers, criminal bosses, money launderers and grave robbers to continuously expand his collection." Cyrus Vance, attorney general of the Manhattan district of New York, told the media on the 6th.
The Manhattan District Attorney's Office issued a statement on the same day saying it found convincing evidence in the investigation that Michael Steinhardt, the former hedge fund manager in New York, had stolen 180 artifacts from 11 countries in his lifetime collection of antiquities and antiques, and that at least 171 of them had passed through some well-known antiquities smugglers before being bought by Steinhardt. "They lacked verifiable sources before they appeared in the international art market."
Israeli Death Mask
The criminal investigation into Steinhardt's collection began in 2017 when the Manhattan District Attorney's Office determined he had bought a multimillion-dollar statue of a bull's head — previously stolen during Lebanon's civil war — and then leased it to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. A few months later, the Manhattan District Attorney's Office set up a "heritage smuggling group" to return the bull's head and another statue to Lebanon in late 2017.
But the team continued to investigate Steinhardt's collection of artifacts, and investigators even raided his home and office at one point. From 2017 to 2021, the Manhattan District Attorney's Office has executed 17 judicial search warrants and conducted joint investigations with law enforcement in 11 countries— including Bulgaria, Egypt, Greece, Iraq, Israel, Italy, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Syria, and Turkey. They surveyed more than 1,000 artifacts that Steinhardt had acquired, owned and sold since 1987 and determined that 180 had been stolen from their countries of origin.
Some artifacts recovered from Steinhardt's home
Steinhardt has handed over all 180 illegally smuggled artifacts worth a total of $70 million, but he denies he has criminal problems. During a arraignment, Steinhardt reportedly pointed to an ancient Greek terracotta coffin and told investigators: "Did you see this work?" It has no provenance. If I see a piece and like it, then I buy it (regardless of the source). ”
The Manhattan District Attorney's Office did not prosecute him, instead issuing him a lifetime ban on the purchase of other artifacts, the first of its kind in the world. It is reported that this is one of the contents of the agreement between Steinhardt and the prosecutor's office.
Cyrus Vance
Vance said the decision not to prosecute Steinhardt also means on the other hand that the stolen artifacts can be returned more quickly to their rightful owners in their country of origin, without having to remain in the United States for years as evidence needed by a grand jury to prosecute and try Steinhardt.
Not only that, Vance said, "This resolution also allows my office to continue to hide the identities of many of our witnesses at home and abroad to protect the integrity of the separate parallel investigations in each of the 11 countries with which we are conducting joint investigations," and it is reported that once a lawsuit is filed against Steinhardt, the names and identities of the witnesses will be exposed, thus affecting other ongoing investigations.
In response, two of Steinhardt's lawyers said in a statement: "Mr. Steinhardt is pleased to see that years of investigation by the district attorney have been able to conclude the case without any charges and that items that have been mistakenly taken by others will be returned to their home country." ”
However, the deterrent effect of Steinhardt's ban on the collection of antiquities is another matter – after all, this year, Steinhardt is 81 years old.
Before getting caught up in the artifact case, he had been called "Wall Street's greatest trader" by Bloomberg. He founded hedge fund Steinhardt Partners in 1967, which delivered an average annualized return of 24.5 percent for its clients from 1967 to 1995. But after losing a third of its value during the 1994 bond market crisis, he closed the fund. It wasn't until 2004 that he returned to the fund market again, leading Wisdom Tree Investments, a fund firm with nearly $64 billion in assets under management. Until his retirement in 2019, he was Chairman of the Board of Wisdom Tree. According to Forbes magazine, as of October 2018, Steinhardt's net worth was $1.1 billion.
According to The Guardian, among the artifacts Steinhardt handed over under an agreement with the Manhattan District Attorney's Office, included a stag shoulai cup worth about $3.5 million. It is an exquisite ritual stag head artifact dating back to 400 BC. It was originally in Milas, Turkey, but was stolen and sold to the heritage market. In 1993, Steinhardt leased it to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Oshika Shui-to-Kotsu Cup
Another treasure is an Ecolano mural worth about $1 million. It depicts Hercules, the god hercules of ancient Greek mythology, as a child, strangling a snake sent by the queen of heaven, Hera, to kill him. In 1995, when it was robbed of a Roman villa in the ruins of Herculaneum near Naples, Steinhardt bought the mural for $650,000 from a convicted antiquities dealer.
Ecolano murals
It is understood that in the process of searching for these artifacts, the famous archaeologist Christos Tsirogiannis (Christos Tsirogiannis) contributed to it. He was a senior field archaeologist at the University of Cambridge and is now an associate professor at the Institute for Advanced Studies at Aarhus University in Denmark. Over the past 15 years, Sirogiannis has discovered more than 1,550 looted artifacts in major auction houses, commercial galleries, private collections and museums. He is committed to helping ensure the return of these looted artifacts by alerting Interpol and other relevant agencies.
He told The Guardian: "From the photographic archives of confiscated artifacts by convicted dealers and antiquities dealers, I found that many of the dozens of artifacts in Steinhardt's collection first appeared among the world's 'most prestigious' top dealers and auction houses." ”
Ancient Greek terracotta coffins
In November 2014, Sirogiannis first alerted the Manhattan District Attorney's Office to Steinhardt's case. At that time, he discovered an extremely rare prehistoric statue of a prehistoric Sardinian deity at Christie's in New York, which was estimated at $800,000 to $1.2 million. He then found fragments of the same deity from the confiscated photograph archives of the notorious and convicted antique dealer Giacomo Medici. Subsequently, the item was withdrawn from the auction house and eventually returned to Italy. The unfolding of the case eventually led to the outcome that Steinhardt is now facing.
For now, Christie's auction house has declined to comment on the Steinhardt case.
News and image sources: NPR, Forbes, The Guardian, The New York Post, some of the pictures are from the Internet
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