FBI launch investigation into stolen items from the British Museum
A further update has been provided about the British Museum’s missing items. The art institution have received help from the FBI, who have begun an investigation into the sale to US buyers of suspected missing artefacts.
Last summer, the museum reported that they had fired Dr Peter Higgs, their ex-senior curator for the British Museum’s Greek and Roman antiquities department, over suspected stolen artefacts. Over a period of 20 years, over 1500 items had gone missing from their store room, with suspicions mounting about Higgs’ behaviour.
Since then, the museum team have been on a mission to rescue these pieces. In a recent update, they celebrated that they’d been successful in finding almost half. Their statement read, “Through clever detective work and a network of well-wishers, we’ve achieved a remarkable result: more than 600 of the objects are back with us, and a further 100 have been identified—in total, almost half the stolen items that we could recover.”
However, efforts to rediscover the second half have stepped up a notch, as the FBI has been called in. After the items went missing, many ended up on eBay. A user called Sultan1966, who is alleged to be Higgs, has been selling items suspected to be the museum’s goods. One piece of Roman jewellery, reportedly worth £50,000, was offered for a starting price of just £40.
The FBI have begun investigating the sale of these suspected items to US buyers. One buyer from New Orleans told the BBC that an FBI agent had contacted him for information about two pieces he had bought on eBay. The US based agency is reportedly helping the Metropolitan Police with their efforts to find the remaining missing items, having already assisted with the return of 268 items which ended up in the hands of a collected in Washington.
As the search for these items goes across to America, further issues with the search have been highlighted. Many of the missing items had not yet been officially catalogued as they sat in the museum’s stock room. This means that the British Museum has to find ways to prove that it owns the pieces. In some cases, collectors who have bought suspected stolen items are agreeing to donate items to the museum so staff can asses them.
Dr Higgs remains accused by the British Museum of stealing, damaging, melting down, and selling ancient artefacts. The museum claims he will have pocketed around £100,000 from the items in total. He denies all the allegations. However, according to the court documents, the museum alleges Dr Higgs admitted the account Sultan1966 belonged to him.
