Daily Times

New York-From an ancient Middle Eastern limestone elephant to seventh century Chinese sculptures, New York prosecutors have seized hundreds of priceless artefacts looted from around the globe that have earned it the reputation as a key global hub for art trafficking. The Metropolitan Museum of Art is among major institutions and collectors who have been forced to hand over works that the city has returned to more than a dozen countries in Asia, Europe and Africa. The scale of the seizures and repatriations “leaves no shadow of a doubt,” said Christos Tsirogiannis, a forensic archaeologist and art historian specializing in stolen art works. “New York is one of the world’s hub cities for the illicit trafficking of antiquities,” he told AFP. Tsirogiannis of the University of Aarhus in Denmark, and David Gill, a professor at Britain’s Kent Law School, have been helping the Manhattan district attorney’s campaign to return stolen art to their country of origin. Since 2017, prosecutors have repatriated pieces that were looted from around 20 countries between the 1970s and 1990s. They have included works from ancient Greece, the Roman and Byzantine empires, Iraq, China, India and Southeast Asia.