St. PETERSBURG, 5 November 2015 (UN News Service): Trafficking in cultural property has increasingly come to the attention of the international community and represents a source of enormous illicit profits, an official from UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) has stressed in St. Petersburg, Russia.
According to UNODC, proceeds of transnational crime related to art and cultural property may amount to some 0.8 per cent of all illicit financial flows, between 3.4 and 6.3 billion dollars every year.
“In recent years, the world has witnessed the growing involvement of violent extremists and terrorists in the destruction, looting, trafficking and sale of cultural property, in complicity with organized criminal groups,” John Brandolino, the Director of UNODC’s Division for Treaty Affairs, told delegates attending a special event of the world’s largest anti-corruption forum.
“The challenges presented by this phenomenon are complex and multi-faceted, and clearly require responses at the national level as well as strong regional and international cooperation to meet them,” he added.
“There is growing awareness and evidence of the increasing involvement of organized criminal groups in the looting, trafficking and sale of cultural property,” he explained.
“Such groups are often involved in other types of crimes, such as illicit arms and drug trafficking, money-laundering, corruption and terrorism financing.”
“Trafficking in cultural property is also used to launder the proceeds of crime, and has been identified as a source of financing for terrorist acts,” Mr Brandolino added. “This is clearly an urgent threat requiring the attention of the international community.”
Meanwhile, he recalled that both the UN and the international community have some existing tools and frameworks available, such as the Hague convention of 1954, the UN Convention Against Corruption and the United Nations Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime.
Mr. Brandolino said UNODC is honoured to be part of the global initiative recently launched at UN Headquarters in New York to protect cultural heritage and mobilize the international community against the trafficking and destruction of cultural property by terrorist groups and organized criminal networks.
