Greeks probe link to Getty after finding stash of artifacts
Greece is investigating whether there is a link between a cache of antiquities seized last week and the Getty Museum in Los Angeles, according to the Greek culture minister.
Police suspect an international smuggling ring after discovering a large cache of illegal antiquities on a remote Greek island.
Greek media immediately began speculating about a link to the Getty museum in Los Angeles. Greece has been demanding the return of several artifacts from its collection, saying they were illegally exported.
Greek Culture Minister Giorgos Voulgarakis said there is no evidence linking the find to Greece's dispute with the Getty, but it will be investigated.
Greek police found 280 artifacts during a raid on a villa in Schoinoussa, a tiny island in the Cyclades chain, and on a house in Athens.
Some of the pieces appeared to have been bought at international auction houses, such as Christie's and Sotheby's, but they had not been declared to authorities as Greek law demands.
"There are seals and packaging which indicate that there was commercial trafficking going on," Voulgarakis said.
The artifacts, some more than 3,000 years old, were from the Mediterranean and elsewhere. Among them are a headless marble statue of Aphrodite, dating to Roman times; a marble sarcophagus decorated with sculpted human and animal masks; three marble busts; and two granite sphinxes.
Architectural fragments, including columns and capitals, had been built into a modern chapel on the six-acre estate surrounding the villa on Schoinoussa.
"The general impression is that the owners wanted to create the ambiance of a Roman villa," a Culture Ministry statement said.
The properties belonged to the Papadimitriou shipping family, but the owners were not home at the time of the raid. Despoina Papadimitriou, named by police and Greek media as owner of the villa, is the sister of the late Christo Michailidis, a London-based art dealer who supplied the Getty with Greek, Roman and Etruscan antiquities.
Last month, police seized more than 60 illegal antiquities in another raid on two homes on the island of Paros, near Schoinoussa.
One of those homes belonged to Marion True, the former Getty curator who is on trial in Rome over charges she was complicit in buying illegally obtained Italian antiquities.
Greece is asking the Getty museum to return a gold funerary wreath dating to about 400 BC, a female statue from 6th century BC, and two sculpted funerary markers.
The J. Paul Getty Trust, the group that oversees the Getty museum, has been restored to full membership in the Council on Foundations, the leading group of foundations and charitable organizations in the U.S.
The Council said the trust had made "positive and significant" reforms. It placed the trust on probation in December for failing to provide adequate documentation of its financial practices.