The district attorney for New York has given Italy stolen artwork valued at $19 million (£16 million).
The 58 artifacts include a marble head of the goddess Athena dating to 200 BC that is thought to be worth $3 million on its own.
Convicted thieves sold the stolen artifacts to private dealers and museums, according to Mr. Alvin Bragg.
It is the city’s most recent attempt to return stolen items to their nation of origin; this year, $66 million worth of stolen products have already been returned.
There would be “many more seizures and many more repatriations,” according to the chief of the district attorney’s antiquities trafficking team.
21 of the items, which originated from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, were seized and repatriated to Italy with the help of Homeland Security.
The pieces are extremely valuable financially, but one Italian official called them “priceless.”
The fact that these items would be returning to communities who would know “where we come from, about our history, about our identity,” according to General Roberto Riccardi, made him particularly glad.
According to Homeland Security officials, investigators spent years following the art smugglers’ trails to find the objects that were being returned.
According to the DA’s office, convicted robbers Giacomo Medici and Giovanni Franco Becchina stole items from unsecured premises using a network spread throughout Italy.
According to the report, these artifacts were finally brought to the US and sold to American millionaire Michael Steinhardt, who is now prohibited from purchasing antiquities following the discovery of proof that some of the possessions he acquired were the product of unlawful smuggling and looting.
Mr. Steinhardt agreed to a settlement that will spare him from prosecution in exchange for the handover of artifacts valued at $70 million in 2021.
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