The workplace of Manhattan District Legal professional Alvin Bragg has facilitated the return of 29 antiquities, collectively valued at $3m, to their rightful dwelling in Greece. A ceremony was held earlier this month on the Consulate Basic of Greece in New York to mark the event and formally hand over the objects
The artefacts embody items implicated in trafficking networks carried out by the smugglers Robin Symes and Eugene Alexander. Symes, a British artwork seller who died in 2023, fell from grace after a 2016 probe by the Carabinieri, Italy’s specialist artwork investigation squad, revealed him to be the ringleader of a world prison looting syndicate that spanned many years.
“These 29 extraordinary items have been recovered because of the exhausting work of our prosecutors and analysts,” Bragg in an announcement. “The influence of those important trafficking networks are nonetheless felt in New York, and we’ll proceed to work alongside our companions across the globe to return stolen objects.”
Notable objects within the repatriated trove embody a sculpture dubbed “Bronze Foot within the Type of a Sphinx”, which really would possibly depict a siren; it was seized from the Metropolitan Museum of Artwork in 2025. Relationship from the 600BC, a trafficker had offered it to Symes, who in flip offered it to a non-public collector who donated it to the Met in 2000.
One other piece, a bronze applique depicting a gorgon and relationship from the sixth century BC, was initially hooked up to a bronze vessel. It depicts a working mythological feminine monster with snakes for hair, most popularly portrayed in modern-day parlance by the story of Medusa. The bronze gorgon was offered by the trafficker Robert Hecht to Fortuna High-quality Arts, a gallery that’s at present battling fraud costs in federal courtroom. Fortuna offered the applique to a non-public collector who then loaned the artefact to the Met, the place it was seized by the Manhattan District Legal professional’s workplace’s Antiquities Trafficking Unit earlier this yr.
“Every repatriation of Greek antiquities is a profoundly essential occasion, vindicating the Ministry of Tradition’s coverage in recent times,” Lina Mendoni, the Greek minister of tradition, mentioned in an announcement. “Greece is now internationally recognised as a rustic that has positioned the battle towards illicit trafficking of cultural heritage on the forefront of its agenda—a difficulty straight linked to organised crime and terrorism.”
Since Bragg took workplace as Manhattan’s District Legal professional at first of 2022, his workplace’s Antiquities Trafficking Unit has recovered almost 2,400 artefacts looted from 47 international locations, value a mixed $260m. Earlier this yr, his workplace returned eight artefacts to Peruvian authorities and assisted with the repatriation of three sculptural objects to Iraq.
