Feds return trove of seized ancient coins to Greece

The United States returned a treasure trove of ancient coins to Greece as part of a program to repatriate cultural property, federal officials announced Wednesday.

The 51 coins represent the largest such collection repatriated by Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), the division of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) that handles cross-border crime.

“Trafficking in antiquities is a multibillion-dollar criminal enterprise, but when traffickers steal these antiquities from a country, they’re robbing from the cultural heritage of a nation — solely for their potential to generate profit,” said R. Sean Fitzgerald, HSI Chicago special agent in charge, in a statement. 

The coins landed in HSI’s control after Customs and Border Protection intercepted four shipments entering the United States without the proper paperwork.

HSI officials and Greek government officials, including Alexandra Papadopoulou, the Greek ambassador to the U.S., held a ceremony last week to formalize the return.

“As these coins get back to Greece where they belong, I’m sure it will make an exciting, powerful display as part of our culture, as part of our shared identity, and as part of our close relationship with the United States,” Papadopoulou said.

According to ICE, the agency returned cultural artifacts to more than 15 countries on 20 occasions in 2022 as part of its Cultural Property, Art and Antiquities Program.

The materials returned ranged from prehistoric fossils to artwork stolen from Jews during the Holocaust.

“HSI possesses the unique skills and determination necessary to disrupt this concerning practice. At HSI Chicago, we have a dedicated unit with agents specially trained to track down lost and stolen pieces, ultimately contributing to approximately 20,000 artifacts that HSI has recovered and returned to over 40 countries since 2007,” Fitzgerald said.

There are no clear estimates of the size of global antiquities trafficking, though repatriations like the one conducted by HSI are valued in the hundreds of millions per year.

Yet the trade can be overestimated as well as underestimated in monetary terms, further complicating strategies to combat antiquities smuggling.

“There is, for example, the vexatious claim that the illicit trade in cultural objects is valued at billions of dollars annually and ranks with drugs and arms as one of the three most serious illicit trades. The claim has been refuted many times but never seems to go away,”  wrote researchers in a 2021 Journal of Field Archaeology paper.

Still, the monetary value of antiquities often pales in comparison to the cultural value assigned by countries of origin.

“It is often extremely difficult to put a specific monetary value on an ancient historical coin,” Fitzgerald said. “That notwithstanding, as tokens of the world’s oldest democracy, Greece’s cultural property — in HSI’s view — is considered priceless.”  

And according to a report published by the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, “2022 could potentially offer a turning point in tackling crimes against cultural heritage.” 

That report found increased international cooperation, and high-profile cultural property returns exposing major players in the global trade.

“Many returns have stemmed from multi-national operations that have ensnared prominent art collectors and dealers accused of looting and running trafficking rings in plain sight from luxury addresses in major capitals,” wrote the researchers.

“Investigations into cultural property trafficking, some spurred by large-scale leaks of financial documents including the FinCen files and Pandora Papers, have embroiled some of the art world elite and its foremost cultural institutions.”