Imagine that an antiquity or royal jewelry, which was displayed hours ago behind the glass of a secured museum, could disappear without leaving a trace, and then reappear years later, in a new look at an international auction, and with new documents.
This scenario is repeated frequently. Interpol’s 2023 report classified illicit trade in cultural property among the most prominent global organized crime markets, and estimated its losses at billions of dollars every year.
But the theft itself is in fact only a short moment in a long story. Before the glass is broken or the lock is opened, a stage begins that – in the eyes of UNESCO and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime – is one of the most sensitive stages of the operation, which is the reconnaissance stage.
Security reports indicate that gangs spend weeks and months monitoring exhibition sites, monitoring guards, identifying less-monitored areas, measuring camera angles, visitors’ itineraries, and even the height of exhibition platforms, as some gangs may use precise photographic tools built into glasses and pens.
Reports also indicate that some networks are using art experts to determine which pieces have the highest value on the black market and are easiest to sell.
An item is not stolen because it is necessarily rare, but because it is financially negotiable, lightweight, and can be dismantled, hidden, or resold without raising suspicion. When the information gathering phase is complete, the attack phase begins, which may not exceed one minute.
Months of operation
The most famous operation that aroused global attention occurred on November 25, 2019 inside the Green Vault Museum in Dresden, Germany, which houses one of the most ancient collections of European royal jewelry.
Although the operation was described by the media as “an operation that took place in 100 seconds,” the operation that targeted the Louvre, in the French capital, Paris, on October 19, 2025, was considered the most dangerous in terms of its significance and general impact.
During the “Green Vault” operation, a professional gang seized 21 rare pieces of property within a few minutes, and despite the size of the operation’s losses, it remained within the framework of a highly professional robbery.
As for the Louvre operation, which took place in 7 minutes, the French Crown Jewels were robbed in broad daylight, revealing a security deficiency in the facility, which is a national symbol, according to the description of the French Minister of Culture, who said that “the operation revealed an unprecedented failure.”
But where do these pieces go after they are stolen? Does she have another life somewhere else?
The flight to Geneva
After the pieces of art or jewelry leave the museum or their location, the first moment of concealment begins. It is the most elusive stage in the course of the crime, and it has several aspects. The precious pieces are either dismantled and repackaged into new pieces, or they are hidden and transferred to their new owner.
The UNESCO office documented for the year 2020 that original pieces can be replaced with high-precision copies made in secret workshops, especially in the regions of Eastern Europe, where there are networks specialized in making imitations that cannot be observed with the naked eye at all, provided that the real pieces are transported at another stage outside the borders. This is what international police experts call the “critical time window,” which represents the time that takes before the curators discover that the piece is counterfeit.
The journey of stolen items abroad begins by hiding among completely legal goods, and UNESCO documents in its 2020 report that smuggling often occurs through shipments carrying cheap furniture, antiques, or decorative collectibles, and some networks use private transport companies or unofficial transit routes, especially in the Balkan region.
Europol points out in its report for the same year that less stringent border controls have made this region a central corridor for looted items from the Middle East and North Africa. Thus, the looted item enters the shadow world, a world in which it transforms from a cultural relic into a light, high-value commodity that moves between borders as if it does not carry a story or a homeland.
Reports have proven that the final destination of all valuable stolen goods is not the Balkans or even the major countries in the European Union, but rather Switzerland, specifically the city of Geneva.
Freeport…the black box
In recent decades, Geneva has turned into one of the most important art storage centers in the world, and the police explain this by the presence of so-called free warehouses or freeports that allow the storage of high-value goods without paying customs duties, without revealing the identity of the owner, and without the warehouse’s obligation to maintain a detailed record of ownership.
The Swiss newspaper “Neue Zürcher” and studies issued by the University of Geneva state that these warehouses contain a huge collection and tens of thousands of works of art that have been stored for decades. No Swiss official body has indicated a specific number determining the size of these holdings, as the Federal Customs Administration describes the Freeport warehouses as a special customs zone whose contents cannot be inspected by any authority except by a specific judicial order, which makes actual control operations very rare.
Also, a report by the Swiss Federal Audit Office issued in 2014 explicitly criticized the absence of ownership records within warehouses, while the Swiss Ministry of Finance confirms that works of art are not considered “high-risk assets” within the framework of anti-money laundering, which means that they are not subject to the disclosure and transparency requirements imposed on other financial assets.
The 2023 Interpol report notes that “all warehouses limit the ability of international investigation agencies to trace the path of looted cultural property due to limited transparency,” as the report did not classify them as a smuggling tool, taking into account the legal limits of their original function.
Thus, Geneva turns into a gray space in which looted items move easily until they return to the market with a new ownership record.
During the storage of art pieces in Freeport in Geneva, a kind of rebirth begins for these pieces, through the reformulation of a completely new ownership record.
The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime explains in its 2021 report that counterfeiting ownership has become an activity subject to a kind of specialization on the black market, relying on precise tools that include sales invoices issued by real art dealers, forged certificates of appreciation that are difficult to detect, shipping documents dated out of date, and even the inclusion of the art piece in a private collection that only exists on paper, and cannot be verified without the consent of the supposed owner.
Once this new registry is complete, the piece becomes legally proven from a market perspective, even if its true original history is completely lost.
Once this stage is reached, the piece of art is ready to move from Switzerland to the most powerful sales platforms in the world, from London to New York.
Major auctions… legitimacy through paper
When the looted items arrive in New York, London, or other international auctions, they have completed the most dangerous part of their journey: hiding and bleaching, and building a coherent history and record of ownership.
Case files issued by the US Department of Justice indicate that major auctions often rely on documents provided by the seller, and do not conduct an independent criminal investigation into the history of ownership unless a clear red flag appears, such as listing the item in the Interpol database.
Museum guidelines, such as the rules adopted by the North American Art Museum Directors Association, recommend verifying available documents, or so-called reasonable examination, but do not require auctions to trace every stage of the property’s history, especially those that go back many years.
For this reason, the pieces that have spent many years in Geneva warehouses seem less suspicious, because they are not included in any theft report or in Interpol records, and they carry documents that appear very official and a history of ownership that is more or less consistent with market expectations, which makes public auctions the stage in which the piece gains its final legitimacy.
Antiques police…the most dangerous front
On the other side of the complex networks, there are dedicated units that are considered the most important line of defense in confronting this type of crime, the most prominent of which is the Carabinieri in Italy, which is the police force that was established in 1969 and is considered the oldest in the world. The Italian Ministry of Culture indicates in its 2022 report that it has recovered more than 1.2 million objects within one decade, in a tally that is considered a precedent in the world. The Ministry adds that the Italian model has become an international standard for cooperation between the police, museums and the Public Prosecution.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation in the United States of America (FBI) pursued the smuggling of art objects in the 1990s, and was strengthened in 2004 by launching a national database and establishing a specialized team.
An official report by the FBI office in 2022 indicates that the team has recovered more than 15,000 items so far, stressing that “an essential part of its success depends on tracking the money before tracking the looted items, because crime speaks the language of money first.”
The US Department of Justice also explains that the team carried out joint operations with other countries such as Italy, Turkey, India and Egypt, and contributed to the recovery of pieces that were displayed in international public auctions with false ownership data.
At the European level, Europol leads extensive operations known as “Pandora,” in which more than 30 customs and police agencies participate.
Europol’s official report confirms that “about 56,400 antiquities were seized in 28 countries,” warning that “the black market for heritage has become one of the main financing gateways for transnational organized crime.”
The agency adds that “smuggling networks use the same routes through which weapons and drugs are smuggled.”
Despite this great effort, the results of operations to return stolen antiques and jewelry remain below the required level, as the Interpol Arts Report for 2023 indicates that their success did not exceed a 10% rate.
Thefts assassinate collective memory
During the journeys of looted pieces, the artwork is lost, as well as part of the shared human memory. The piece that was supposed to be displayed in front of everyone turns into the individual property of one person, and the history that was available to the public turns into a commodity in a box or a closed room that only a small elite can see.
UNESCO says in its reports: “The theft of any artifact represents an irreparable loss of collective memory, and the disappearance of these artifacts is like tearing out a page from human history.”