Gianfranco_Becchina

Gianfranco Becchina

Gianfranco Becchina

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Gianfranco Becchina is an Italian antiquities dealer who has been convicted in Italy of illegally dealing in antiquities.[1]

Early life

Gianfranco Becchina was born in 1939 in Sicily. He is also known as Giovanni Franco Becchina.

Art dealing

Becchina owns the gallery Palladion Antike Kunst.[2][1] Becchina has supplied art objects to the Ashmolean,[3] the Louvre,[4] the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the Metropolitan Museum of Art,[5][6][7][8] the Princeton University Art Museum,[9] the Toledo Museum of Art[10] and the J. Paul Getty Museum,[11][12] the collectors George Ortiz,[13] Leon Levy and Shelby White,[14] the Merrin Gallery in New York, Japanese antiquities dealer Noriyoshi Horiuchi, Dietrich von Bothmer of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.[15] He has collaborated with the art dealers Mario Bruno and Elie Borowsky, and sold material through Sotheby's and Christie's auction houses in London. Sometimes he used pseudonymes such as Anna Spinello (the married name of his sister).[1]

Conviction for art trafficking

Becchina was convicted in Italy in 2011 of art trafficking.[16] He appealed but the ruling was upheld.[17]

Looted objects

In 2015 during an investigation into Gianfranco Becchina and his wife Ursula Jurascheka, a joint raid by the Swiss and Italian police discovered looted antiquities values in the tens of millions of dollars.[18][19] In December 2019 the United States has filed a civil complaint seeking the forfeiture of an Attic Etruscan votive statuette that was recovered by the FBI and HSI years after it was illegally excavated and smuggled out of Italy.[20] In 2023, Matteo Messina Denaro, an organized crime boss in Italy claimed that he had links to Becchina whose assets were seized in connection to the investigation.[21][22]

Efforts to recover looted antiquities that passed through Becchina are ongoing.[23]

Further reading

United States v. ONE ATTIC ETRUSCAN VOTIVE STATUETTE OF A FEMALE FIGURE

See also

References

  1. [1]
    "Gianfranco Becchina" (PDF). sherloc.unodc.org.
  2. [2]
    Mashberg, Tom; Bowley, Graham (2022-09-02). "Investigators, Citing Looting, Have Seized 27 Antiquities From the Met". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2023-11-10.
  3. [3]
    "British museums linked to Sicilian 'loot dealer'". thetimes.co.uk.
  4. [4]
    à 14h33, Par Le Parisien avec AFP Le 14 juillet 2023 (2023-07-14). "L'Italie réclame au Louvre sept antiquités probablement pillées". leparisien.fr (in French). Retrieved 2023-11-10.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  5. [5]
    "A New York, la justice rend à l'Italie des œuvres de l'Antiquité volées". www.20minutes.fr (in French). 2023-02-04. Retrieved 2023-11-08.
  6. [6]
    "Une mafia très antique - Le Temps" (in French). 2006-05-06. ISSN 1423-3967. Retrieved 2023-11-08.
  7. [7]
    Baldacchino, Julien (2022-09-07). "Près d'une soixantaine d'œuvres d'art volées rendues par les États-Unis à l'Italie". France Inter (in French). Retrieved 2023-11-08.
  8. [8]
    "More than 1000 artifacts in Metropolitan Museum of Art catalog linked to alleged looting and trafficking figures - ICIJ". 2023-03-20. Retrieved 2023-11-11.
  9. [9]
    "New Wave of Returns: Hundreds of Looted Antiquities Recovered from the Met, Princeton and Others". CHASING APHRODITE. 2012-01-24. Retrieved 2023-11-08.
  10. [10]
    "Affaire Kalpis à figures noires étrusque – Italie et Toledo Museum of Art".
  11. [11]
    Mashberg, Tom; Povoledo, Elisabetta (2022-08-12). "Getty to Return Three Major Sculptures to Italy". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2023-11-08.
  12. [12]
    "Italie: plus importante opération de récupération d'oeuvres d'art volés". Le Point (in French). 2015-01-21. Retrieved 2023-11-10.
  13. [13]
    "Itinéraire d'une antiquité volée". unesco.org.
  14. [14]
    "Artifacts seized from prominent New York collector as US authorities push to return looted treasures - ICIJ". 2022-12-06. Retrieved 2023-11-08.
  15. [15]
    Neuendorf, Henri (2015-01-22). "Millions of Looted Antiquities Uncovered in Raid". Artnet News. Retrieved 2023-11-08.
  16. [16]
    "A stolen Etruscan vessel will be returned to Italy from United States". unesco.org.
  17. [17]
    Papadopoulos, Yiannis (2018-06-05). "Court upholds Italian art dealer's conviction over rare church murals | eKathimerini.com". www.ekathimerini.com. Retrieved 2023-11-11.
  18. [18]
    Neuendorf, Henri (2015-01-22). "Millions of Looted Antiquities Uncovered in Raid". Artnet News. Retrieved 2023-11-10.
  19. [19]
    "Largest Amount of Stolen Italian Artifacts Recovered – Italian Journal". Retrieved 2023-11-11.
  20. [20]
    "District of Columbia | United States Files Complaint Seeking Forfeiture of Ancient Sculpture Stolen from Italy and Smuggled into the United States | United States Department of Justice". www.justice.gov. 2019-12-10. Retrieved 2023-11-08.
  21. [21]
    ""Messina Denaro finanziato da un mercante d'arte". La Dia sequestra il patrimonio di Becchina". la Repubblica (in Italian). 2017-11-15. Retrieved 2023-11-10.
  22. [22]
    "ITALY: Property of Becchina seized – link to Cosa Nostra". EAA-Committee on the Illicit Trade in Cultural Material. 2017-11-15. Retrieved 2023-11-10.
  23. [23]
    "D.A. Bragg Announces Return of 42 Antiquities to the People of Italy". Manhattan District Attorney's Office. 2023-08-08. Retrieved 2023-11-11. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin L. Bragg, Jr., today announced the return of 42 antiquities to Italy collectively valued at nearly $3.5 million. The pieces were recovered pursuant to several ongoing criminal investigations, and had previously been trafficked by prominent smugglers, including Giacomo Medici, Giovanni Franco Becchina, and Edoardo Almagià. Many of the pieces were passed to the disgraced British art dealer Robin Symes or sold to the collector Shelby White.
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