Kapoor, the world’s most prolific smuggler, has been sentenced

Art Dealer Received Ten Years in Jail, Investigation Continues

A court in Tamil Nadu has sentenced 72-year-old art dealer Subhash Kapoor. For the illegal export of 19 antiques from India to the United States, he received ten years in prison. However, this case is just the tip of the iceberg. Four more criminal cases have been initiated against the smuggler, the investigation of which is ongoing. Since Kaput’s arrest in 2011, about 2,600 pieces of art have been unearthed, which investigators believe were stolen by accomplices from temples and archaeological sites in the Middle East and Southeast Asia for subsequent sale. The scale of the crimes of the smuggler of the century was estimated by MK.

For the time being, Subhash Kapoor was considered one of the most influential art dealers in Manhattan. He was able to do the impossible – quickly find museum-class rare items and easily sell them to the largest museums and galleries in the world. But all the secret sooner or later becomes clear.

The first case against a New York art dealer was filed in India in 2008. The local investigation managed to bring the investigation to the international level and connect Interpol. As a result, in 2011, Subhash Kapoor was arrested at Frankfurt Airport, and in 2012, he was extradited to India. However, the investigation was delayed – the scale of the criminal network turned out to be too large.

In the 11 years since his arrest to this day, about 2,600 antiques have been discovered, stolen in the Middle East and Southeast Asia, illegally imported into the United States, and successfully sold by Subhash Kapoor to various museums, galleries and private collections for about $ 143 million. Investigators found several secret warehouses with contraband in New York. However, there is a suspicion that these are far from all the stolen works of antiquity that were in circulation at the dealer.

The criminal network headed by Kapoor involved hundreds of accomplices. Items were stolen from temples and archaeological sites in Afghanistan, Cambodia, India, Pakistan, Nepal and Thailand. Then they were shipped to Europe and the USA. And there the art dealer made fake documents about the origin of the values.

It is difficult to say how many collections the smuggler has enriched with stolen antiques. Only in the spring of this year, the criminal operations committed by Kapoor began to be revealed. So, in April, the Art Gallery of Yale University, in New Haven (Connecticut), handed over to the investigation 13 exhibits that had once been bought from Kapoor for one million dollars. Two weeks ago, US authorities returned over 300 illegally exported artifacts to an Indian government official, most of which were confiscated as part of the investigation into the Subhash Kapoor case. According to the District Attorney of Manhattan, these exhibits were sold to them for $ 4 million. But among the buyers of Kapoor were such status museums as the Metropolitan in New York and the Toledo Art Museum in Ohio. Things will still come to clearing these collections from smuggling.

So far, only one criminal case against Subhash Kapoor has been brought to a verdict. Together with him, there were five more people in the dock – each of the accomplices received from 10 to 14 years in a strict regime. It is expected that several more trials will take place in the coming months and the term of imprisonment of the head of the criminal group will increase. The international investigation into Subhash Kapoor may go down in history as the largest in the history of the 21st century.