French court upholds serious charges against the ex-director of the Louvre

This week, a French appeals court upheld charges against Jean-Luc Martinez, the former president and director of the Louvre in Paris, for his alleged complicity in the trade in antiquities from Egypt.

Martinez, who ran the Louvre from 2013 to 2021, was charged in May with “participating in fraud”, money laundering and “facilitating” the purchase of artefacts linked to an extensive black dealer network that has been a police target for years. French authorities suspect that between 2014 and 2017 a network of smugglers and their associates sold art and relics to museums and galleries around the world, including the Louvre outpost in Abu Dhabi.

Martinez’s former colleague, curator and archaeologist Jean-Francois Charnier, has also been accused of his alleged involvement in the illegal trade. Both are expected to appeal the decision to the French Supreme Court, according to Le Monde.

When Martinez and Charnier were first indicted last year, the art community in Paris and beyond was stunned. Martínez, France’s current official ambassador for international cooperation on cultural heritage, has dedicated his career to the preservation of art in conflict zones and wrote a report that France submitted to the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, detailing new strategies to curb looting.

In November 2022, the prosecutor requested that the charges against Martinez be dropped after the evidence against him was reexamined. The prosecutor’s decision seemed to signal that Martinez, a certified archaeologist, was wrongfully involved in the case. Under the French legal system, an indictment does not guarantee that the accused will stand trial, and charges can be dropped by a special judge at any time during an investigation.

According to Le Monde, in 2019, police suspected the wrongful origin of a stone stele depicting Pharaoh Tutankhamen, which was purchased for the yet-to-be-opened Louvre Abu Dhabi. As head of the Louvre, Martínez chaired a joint government commission whose approval is needed to acquire the object for the museum.