Antiquities trafficking: a former president of the Louvre indicted for money laundering

Jean-Luc Martinez will take office as President and Director of the Louvre Museum on April 15, 2013. Louvre Museum 2013 / Antoine Mongodin

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A former president and director of the Louvre Museum, Jean-Luc Martinez, was indicted this Wednesday, May 25 in Paris for "laundering and complicity in fraud in an organized gang" in an investigation into trafficking in antiquities from the Near and Middle East.

This is what we learned Thursday from a judicial source.

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Jean-Luc Martinez

was placed in police custody on Monday at the premises of the Central Office for the Fight against Trafficking in Cultural Property (OCBC), with two eminent French Egyptologists, according to a source familiar with the matter.

The two specialists have been released without charges at this stage, added this source.

The former president and director of the museum has been indicted for "complicity in fraud in an organized gang and laundering by false facilitation of the origin of property from a crime or misdemeanour", specified the judicial source. .

According to the French weekly,

, which announced the custody, investigators are trying to find out whether Jean-Luc Martinez had "turned a blind eye" to false certificates of origin for five Egyptian antiquities, including a pink granite stele of Tutankhamun, acquired by the Louvre Abu Dhabi “for several tens of millions of euros”.

Hundreds of parts 

 Jean-Luc Martinez, patron of the Louvre from 2013 to the summer of 2021, is now ambassador for international cooperation in the field of heritage.

A preliminary investigation into suspicions of trafficking in antiquities from unstable countries in the Near and Middle East was opened in July 2018 by the National Court in charge of the fight against organized crime (Junalco) of the Paris prosecutor's office.

This traffic would concern hundreds of pieces and would involve several tens of millions of euros, according to sources close at the time.

In this case, at least three other people are being prosecuted for " 

 ".

An expert in Mediterranean archeology and her husband were indicted in June 2020 and placed under judicial supervision.

They are suspected of having " 

 " archaeological objects looted in several countries plagued by instability since the beginning of the 2010s and the emergence of the Arab Spring: Egypt, Libya, Yemen or Syria.

A German-Lebanese gallery owner was also remanded in custody last March.

The OCBC is seeking to determine the conditions for the acquisition by the Louvre Abu Dhabi, via this gallery owner, of the five antiquities illegally taken out of Egypt, according to Le

.

(

AFP)

►Also read: “Antiquities trafficking”: an exhibition at the Louvre Museum

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