The office announced in a press release Wednesday that the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office recently repatriated more than 30 antiquities from Spain, Italy and Hungary.
The reward is just the latest from Alvin Bragg, who has been serving as DA since 2021, and the antiquities trafficking unit has been led by assistant Da Matthew Bogdanos since its inception in 2017. In the years since then, Bogdanos, Bragg and ATU have actively conducted active investigations into ancient traffickers and collectors.
The subjects returned this week came from an investigation of several convicted dealers, including Giacomo Medici, Giovanni Franco Becchina, Robin Symes, Robert Hecht and Eugene Alexander. The investigation into Edoardo Almagià also came from several subjects, for which the DA obtained a warrant and was awaiting extradition in Italy. The DA said the ATU caught 295 items and was allegedly trafficked by Almagià, totaling more than $6 million.
Among the 31 items returned to Italy is a 1st century CE marble that depicts Alexander the Great, excavated from the cathedral Basilica Emilia on a Roman forum, before stealing it from an archaeological museum in Rome.
The 1675 Jesuit manuscript, stolen during World War II, was occupied earlier this year from the sellers of rare books in New York and then returned to Hungary.
To Spain, the ATU returned several Visigoth pendants dating back to the 6th century AD, which were later trafficked by Symes and sold to the Metropolitan in 1990.
