Trafficking in works of art: blood antiques at the IMA in Paris

The Kasbah of Marrakech, Morocco, June 18, 2019 (illustration image). © Frédéric Soltan / Corbis via Getty Images

By: Eric Bataillon

The trade in works of art is a lucrative market: it is estimated at around 60 billion euros. It is essentially legal, but the share of illicit trafficking represents at least 10 billion euros, enough to stir up much lust.

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If the first traffickers are the local residents, often poor and penniless, who find a meager means of subsistence there, the criminal organizations and henceforth, the armed political groups, like Daech, prevail on particularly rich territories, in the Maghreb and in the Middle East .
We talk about these “blood antiquities” with the archaeologist Vincent Michel , interviewed after a news meeting at the Institut du monde arabe in Paris.

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