Billionaire with 'rapacious appetite' agrees to hand over nearly $100m in looted artefacts
Mr Vance said his probe, begun in February 2017, found "compelling evidence" that the 180 antiquities were stolen from 11 countries, with at least 171 passing through traffickers before Mr Steinhardt bought them.
According to prosecutors, while complaining about a subpoena requesting documentation for an antiquity in May 2017, Mr Steinhardt pointed to a small chest from Greece and said to an investigator: "You see this piece? There's no provenance for it. If I see a piece and I like it, then I buy it."Many of the pieces Mr Steinhardt acquired were removed from their countries of origin during times of war or civil unrest, prosecutors said.
Prosecutors said the head, valued at $US3.5 million, appeared without provenance on the international market after rampant looting in Milas, Turkey. The antiquities will be returned to their rightful owners in Bulgaria, Egypt, Greece, Iraq, Israel, Italy, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Syria and Turkey, according to Mr Vance.This gold bowl was looted from Nimrud, Iraq.
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