The workplace of Manhattan District Lawyer Alvin Bragg has facilitated the return of 29 antiquities, collectively valued at $3m, to their rightful dwelling in Greece. A ceremony was held earlier this month on the Consulate Basic of Greece in New York to mark the event and formally hand over the objects
The artefacts embrace items implicated in trafficking networks carried out by the smugglers Robin Symes and Eugene Alexander. Symes, a British artwork supplier who died in 2023, fell from grace after a 2016 probe by the Carabinieri, Italy’s specialist artwork investigation squad, revealed him to be the ringleader of a global legal looting syndicate that spanned many years.
“These 29 extraordinary items have been recovered because of the laborious work of our prosecutors and analysts,” Bragg in an announcement. “The affect of those vital trafficking networks are nonetheless felt in New York, and we are going to proceed to work alongside our companions across the globe to return stolen objects.”
Notable objects within the repatriated trove embrace a sculpture dubbed “Bronze Foot within the Type of a Sphinx”, which truly may depict a siren; it was seized from the Metropolitan Museum of Artwork in 2025. Courting from the 600BC, a trafficker had bought it to Symes, who in flip bought it to a personal collector who donated it to the Met in 2000.
One other piece, a bronze applique depicting a gorgon and courting from the sixth century BC, was initially connected to a bronze vessel. It depicts a working mythological feminine monster with snakes for hair, most popularly portrayed in modern-day parlance by way of the story of Medusa. The bronze gorgon was bought by the trafficker Robert Hecht to Fortuna High-quality Arts, a gallery that’s at the moment battling fraud costs in federal court docket. Fortuna bought the applique to a personal collector who then loaned the artefact to the Met, the place it was seized by the Manhattan District Lawyer’s workplace’s Antiquities Trafficking Unit earlier this yr.
“Every repatriation of Greek antiquities is a profoundly vital occasion, vindicating the Ministry of Tradition’s coverage in recent times,” Lina Mendoni, the Greek minister of tradition, mentioned in an announcement. “Greece is now internationally recognised as a rustic that has positioned the battle in opposition to illicit trafficking of cultural heritage on the forefront of its agenda—a problem immediately linked to organised crime and terrorism.”
Since Bragg took workplace as Manhattan’s District Lawyer in the beginning of 2022, his workplace’s Antiquities Trafficking Unit has recovered almost 2,400 artefacts looted from 47 international locations, value a mixed $260m. Earlier this yr, his workplace returned eight artefacts to Peruvian authorities and assisted with the repatriation of three sculptural objects to Iraq.
