Swift-Find: Terrorism Funded By Stolen Property

By Joel Leyden
Israel News Agency

Tel Aviv----October 16...... The ancient Greeks did it. The Romans did it. The Nazis were professionals at it. Stealing art and cultural assets to fund terrorist and military activity is nothing new and terrorist groups today continue to sell stolen art to finance their activities.

"Perhaps the best documented case of stealing property and valuables to finance terrorism was when the Sir Alfred Beit Art Collection was stolen by the IRA in 1974," said Dick Ellis of Swift-Find, who previously served as General Manager of Christie's Fine Art Security Services and created the Art and Antiques Squad at the Scotland Yard. This was the world's largest art theft for terrorism with the IRA carrying away canvas after canvas of Rubens, Goya and Vermeer.

The theft was calculated at $32 million at the time - today that value would be $100 million. The IRA had a difficult time in disposing of the treasured loot and the Irish police recovered almost all of it in a couple of months. "Well known criminal Martin Cahill, who was constantly subjected to and refused IRA extortion threats was now out to show the IRA how to steal," said Ellis. Cahill successfully grabbed the collection again in 1986 and was prepared to work with any terrorist, regardless of their ideology.

Other modern day examples of the relationship between stolen property and terrorism and tyranny include the looting of museums in Beirut during the 1980's. "These were not your everyday people stopping by to pick up a piece of gold or historical bronze but those who were in control of the area, those who needed gunpower to gain access," said Ellis. Looting was conducted by both Muslims and Christians as the museum watched the warring factions. Ellis said that the route out of the area was through Jordan and Cyprus. Syria was involved to a lesser degree but many players were involved in aiding and abetting the continuing warring and terrorist activities.

"This and the looting of Iraq's museums by Saddam's collapsing regime were very well planned and thought out. In Iraq, before the looting even began, the looters searched for and destroyed all museum inventory lists so that there would be little left of a paper trail." According to Ellis, the Iraqis were not as lucky when they invaded Kuwait.

The Royal family of Kuwait had the insight and intelligence to maintain copies of their personal collection with a company in London. As a result, much of the stolen goods were recovered by Scotland Yard, the FBI, Interpol and other law enforcement agencies. This appears to be the key in safeguarding art and cultural property.

The tradition of looting has never died away in Iraq. Iraqis looted Kuwait in 1990 of anything they could steal, from mobile cranes to wedding dresses. Even lobster suddenly appeared on the menu of the al-Rashid hotel in Baghdad - fresh from the deep freeze of a hotel in Kuwait. During the Kurdish civil war in the north in 1996, some 5,000 cars were stolen in Arbil city in a single day. The looting of Baghdad - and every other city in Iraq - in 2003 was part of bedouin tradition in Iraq. Much of the loot was transferred into cash which then paid for weapons and explosives used by Islamic terrorists.

Swift-Find, a U.K. based company, recently launched the only on-line database where museums, dealers, collectors, and the general public can register their valuables as well as search items up for acquisition against a global database of reported stolen items.

Swift-Find cooperates with the FBI, Scotland Yard, Interpol and many other international law enforcement agencies. Swift-find is concerned that stolen works of art, sculpture, antiquities, works of gold and silver, and even cars may be financing terror campaigns around the globe.

Is it conceivable that Osama Bin-Laden's New York and Washington 9/11 terrorist attacks as well as the recent London bombings attacks were financed by stolen property? "Not directly," said Ellis. "But you can be sure that these terrorists use the art market as an additional source of funding." In addition to the many lives that were lost, the September 11 terror attack against the US is said to have caused the obliteration of more than $10 million worth of art in and around the World Trade Center - including works by Alexander Calder, Nevelson, Miro and Lichtenstein. Art groups surveyed the wreckage and are trying to measure the extent of their losses and to determine how to begin to recoup them. But this terror operation may not have needed stolen valuables or property.

Former Israel Ambassador Dore Gold remarked that "Where you will find blatant use of stolen property to fund terrorism by such groups as Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Fatah, is when they confiscate land that belongs to someone living in South America or Europe, sell it and start building on it."

Gold pointed out that there is also a large business in stealing cars from Israelis and taking them to the West Bank where they are then traded for guns and explosives.

Hitler himself was keen to create the world's greatest art museum in Linz and the Nazis systematically looted art from every country they occupied. Ellis states that Hitler was directing this successful operation of converting art and valuables into hard currency: "Historically you can look at how the Nazis systematically classified, seized and sold art work through dealers, many operating out of Switzerland, and generated money to fund the Nazi party".

"Today you can see dozens of claims regarding stolen Holocaust art which actually precedes the Second World War. We are looking at millions of dollars which were stolen from the personal art collections of Jews and art works which were taken directly from museums under the guise of cleansing German society. In a book entitled 'The Rape of Europa' Lynn Nicholas describes the plunder of European cultural property by Hitler and the Nazis who served him".

A recent example of how cultural property was actually destroyed to instil fear and terror was the action of the Taliban, when they used cannons and explosives to blow up two towering stone statues of Buddha. The explosions of the 3rd and 5th century statues were part of the Taliban Supreme Leader Mullah Mohammed Omar's order for all statues in Afghanistan to be demolished. The order was meant to discourage idolatry. The Taliban, who ruled roughly ninety-five percent of the country, had stopped its work on the giant statues for three days to honour the Muslim festival of Eid al-Adha. The statues were 120 and 170 feet high and were carved into a mountain in Bamiyan. The Taliban refused to allow anyone to go to Bamiyan to verify conflicting claims about the extent of the damage to the ancient carvings.

Afghanistan's Taliban also looted the Kabul museum. Switzerland became part of the route to "wash" the stolen artefacts. Drugs and stolen art historically came out of Afghanistan, but the Taliban reduced the drug trade and replaced it almost entirely with art theft.

"Today many face an ethical dilemma," says Ellis. "Do you buy cultural art to save it from the global art market and then return these priceless items to the country of origin? By doing that you actually fund criminal and terrorist activity".

For dealers trading either knowingly or unwittingly in stolen antiquities, the orgy of looting at Baghdad's national museum in the chaotic days after the fall of Saddam Hussein was bad news. The blaze of publicity has shone an unwelcome spotlight on their sometimes murky world.

The trade in ancient artefacts links dealers of all shades with some of the world's richest people, prestigious museums and art galleries. It ties poor people plundering archaeological sites to international crime and terrorist networks. Wherever there is a coincidence of historic sites and conflict, chaos or political instability, in Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Cambodia, Mali or elsewhere, looters are there. They take from museums, but more frequently from archaeological sites. Once removed, the artefacts are often lost to scholarship.

There is a growing body of evidence that connects the trade in looted antiquities with organised crime and terrorism. Terming trafficking in cultural property a "seamless trade" and pegging its value at $6 billion annually, a high-profile United Nations Educational, Social and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) committee met recently and revealed that it was second only to the narcotics trade - worth some $7 billion.

"Trafficking in cultural property has assumed the dimensions of a seamless trade as drug cartels peddle art objects for ploughing the huge monetary gains in their narcotics trade and also for arms dealings," Dr. A Galla, vice-president of World Council of Museums, told the UNESCO's workshop for the Asia-Pacific region on 'illicit trafficking of cultural property'.

Dr. Galla said the nefarious trade in art objects had transcended the national and regional boundaries to emerge as an international phenomenon, and could be effectively curbed only through collaborative international ventures. "The 1954 Hague convention on the subject is extremely euro-centric and does not address the concern of Asian nations whose priceless cultural heritage continues to be trafficked in western markets," he pointed out. Dr Galla argued that the unbridled trafficking of art objects would be difficult to be curbed through archaic laws.

With all that FBI, Scotland Yard and Interpol have done, the public sector still suffers from an Achilles' heal.

Governmental databases of stolen art are not open to the public. This is where Swift-Find comes in.

Swift-Find was established to protect valuables and have them returned or replaced in case of damage, loss or theft. The secure, on-line and anonymous registry of valuables helps organizations and individuals maintain a detailed record of their property including images, receipts and other documentation.

Furthermore, Swift-Find's international network of museums, auction houses, dealers, collectors, pawnbrokers and more can check in seconds items on sale against Swift-Find's global database of valuables that have been reported stolen. If the item has been reported stolen, the potential buyer and appropriate authorities can be alerted and items can be recovered.

How does having an on-line record on the Swift-Find registry protect you, the owner of valuables?

Even if you lose your receipts, your records are destroyed, or your computer crashes - you always have access to your portfolio to demonstrate proof of ownership and provide accurate descriptions of your belongings to the police, your insurer or even to a possible buyer. In the case of loss or theft, Swift-Find offers your best chance at getting your valuables returned - simply flag your property as stolen on the system and include your crime reference number. Users can trust that their property information is secure on Swift-Find.

The anonymous registry of valuables does not require any personal information - only a user name and password. One of Swift-Find's major priorities is assuring customers' privacy and securing their data against any malicious use. Any access to the data is protected by username and password, authorizing each user to access his/her items only. In addition to top-end 3rd party technological solutions that protect the system against malevolent attacks, the application itself utilises proprietary mechanisms and validates information entered to prevent damage caused by harmful data.

The database is physically separated from the website to minimize data vulnerability and Swift-Find servers are hosted in a secure location to prevent physical access. Swift-Find receives information about lost, stolen, and looted valuables from government agencies, museums, relevant on-line databases and services, Interpol and police forces throughout Europe, as well as the original owners of property.

While there are a number of other specialized databases of stolen goods, none are as comprehensive in size, scope and reach as Swift-Find. Committed to identifying and returning stolen items to their owners, Swift-Find cooperates with many of these specialized databases.

"Swift-Find's on-line, real-time registry of valuables is quickly becoming the recognized global standard to identify ownership, and to recover and replace valuable property, said Ellis. "Swift-Find is used by insurance companies and brokers, police, resellers, dealers, retailers, manufacturers, brands, individuals or their agents, leading auction houses and valuers, to help institutions and individual owners protect their art, cultural property and other valuables."