The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office and Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) have returned more than 100 antiquities worth a total of $14m to Pakistan. The artefacts were seized from multiple trafficking networks, including those of the notorious antiquities smugglers Subhash Kapoor and Richard Beale.
“This repatriation is more than the return of physical objects,” Aamer Ahmed Atozai, Pakistan’s consul general in New York, said at the repatriation ceremony on 21 May. “It is the restoration of a part of Pakistan’s soul and identity.”
Verso of the Gold Strato I Coin (around 105BC-85BC), one of the stolen antiquities returned to Pakistan this week Photo: @ManhattanDA via X
Among the 133 pieces returned to Pakistan this week was a coin minted around 105BC-85BC in what is now northern Pakistan; it had been seized from Beale last year at New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport as he tried to smuggle it into the US. Another significant return was a Gandhara stone head of a Bodhisattva with an elaborate headdress from the 2nd or 3rd century, found in a storage facility where Kapoor had been hiding it.
In the past dozen years or so, the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office has recovered more than 2,500 objects worth almost $150m linked to Kapoor, the disgraced dealer and founder of the now-defunct New York gallery Art of the Past. In 2022, Kapoor was sentenced to ten years in prison by an Indian court for antiquities trafficking. He had already been charged in New York in 2019 on 86 counts of grand larceny, possession of stolen property and conspiracy to defraud; his extradition from India to the US is pending. Last year, it was revealed that the Metropolitan Museum of Art owned 85 works connected to Kapoor; 15 of them have since been repatriated.
Gandhara stone head of a Bodhisattva from the 2nd or 3rd century, found in Subhash Kapoor’s storage unit Photo: Courtesy Homeland Security Investigations
Beale is the owner of the London-based auction house Roma Numismatics, which specialised in rare coins and officially shut down on 24 May. This past September, Beale pleaded guilty in New York to forging provenance documents for ancient coins collectively worth millions of dollars. His next court date is scheduled for 11 December; he faces up to 25 years in prison.
“We will continue to celebrate Manhattan’s status as one of the cultural capitals of the world, while doing everything possible to ensure that the antiquities sitting in our galleries and museums arrived here legally,” said Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg during a brief break from Donald Trump’s hush-money trial.
