White Collar Crime: US billionaire surrenders $70m of stolen art [View all]

An American hedge-fund billionaire has surrendered 180 looted and illegally smuggled antiquities valued at $70m and been handed an unprecedented lifetime ban on acquiring other relics as part of an agreement with the Manhattan district attorney’s office.

Michael Steinhardt, one of the world’s largest collectors of ancient art, “displayed a rapacious appetite for plundered artefacts”, the district attorney Cyrus Vance Jr said on Monday.

The lifetime ban marks the dramatic culmination of an international investigation that began officially in 2017.

The DA’s office said its inquiry found “compelling evidence” that the antiquities were stolen from 11 countries, and that at least 171 passed through traffickers before being bought by Steinhardt.

The seized pieces lacked verifiable provenance prior to appearing on the international art market, the office said, adding that it had executed 17 judicially ordered search warrants and conducted joint investigations with law-enforcement authorities in Bulgaria, Egypt, Greece, Iraq, Israel, Italy, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Syria, and Turkey.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/dec/07/us-billionaire-michael-steinhardt-surrenders-70m-dollars-stolen-art

I remember the TV series White Collar, it was about White Collar Crime like this. Wow, TV imitating life.