Prosecutors Reveal New Details of Theft Claim in St. Louis Art Museum Ka Nefer
Nefer Mask Forfeiture
Prosecutors in the case of
United States v. Mask of Ka-Nefer-Nefer today
filed a Reply in Support of Its Motion to Reconsider. The U.S. Attorney for the
Eastern District of Missouri hopes to reverse a judge's April
dismissal of the case. The government ultimately seeks to
forfeit the allegedly stolen Ka Nefer Nefer mummy mask located at the St. Louis
Art Museum (SLAM) and return it to Egypt. SLAM denies that the mask is stolen
and asserts ownership over the artifact.
The museum filed an
objection earlier this week to the government's
motion requesting the judge to reconsider the dismissal of the
case. Today's pleading by the government responds to the museum's
objection.
The government says that it should be permitted to amend its
original
complaint if the court continues to uphold its dismissal
order. The prosecution goes on to reveal more specific allegations that it
would articulate in a revised complaint:
"To the extent ... that a fuller
explanation of the new allegations to be incorporated into an amended complaint
would aid the Court in assessing the United States’ request for time to seek
leave to amend, the United States is glad to elaborate. If deemed necessary by
the Court, the United States' proposed amended complaint would:
•
expressly allege that the Mask was stolen from box number fifty-four at Saqqara
between 1966 and 1973;
• recite the provisions of the controlling
Egyptian cultural patrimony law, Law No. 215, which provides that ancient
artifacts excavated after 1951 are the national property of the Republic of
Egypt, and establish the absence of any facts that would authorize the Museum’s
ownership of the Mask under Egyptian law;
• summarize the relevant
Egyptian export laws, which required application to be made to the Egyptian
government before the Mask could be exported from Egypt, and allege the absence
of any record of lawful exportation;detail the sale agreement between the Art Museum and the sellers for the
purchase of the Mask, including the obligation of the sellers to provide copies
of applicable export and import licenses, and allege the breach of those
obligations;
• advance allegations regarding the sellers’ knowledge of the falsity of the Mask’s supposed provenance, as well as
information regarding the criminal history of the sellers, to suggest the
illicit nature of the sale;
• describe the Museum’s merely
pro
forma “investigation” into the Mask’s provenance to support the inference
that it knew or was willfully blind to the fact that the Mask was stolen property both before and after its
importation;and
offer citations to numerous other provisions of law, including but not limited
to Egyptian [patrimony] law No. 215 and 18 U.S.C. §§ 2314 and 2315 [the National
Stolen Property Act], to bolster the conclusion that the Mask was imported into
the United States 'contrary to law.'
Federal attorneys further argue that "that the Museum apparently now concedes,
for the first time on this Motion, that probable cause, not a preponderance of
the evidence, is the ultimate trial burden that the United States will have to
bear. The Museum also appears to agree that the United States should not have
to allege 'the date, location, or motive behind the stealing, let alone the
identity of the thief' in order to meet that burden, so long as it can establish
that the Mask is 'stolen.' The Museum likewise appears to admit that an artifact
is considered 'stolen' if its private ownership
violates originating country’s patrimony
laws."
Prosecutors add that SLAM does not correctly construe the law or
the facts of the case. The U.S. Attorney's Office writes
"The Museum
takes a detour, however, when it attempts to distinguish
United States v. One
Lucite Ball Containing Lunar Material on the ground that 'until 1983, there
was no Egyptian law that unequivocally established Egyptian ownership of items
like the Mask.' That claim is not only outside the face of the complaint; it is
also incorrect. As the United States set out in its Motion to Strike the
Museum’s claim for lack of standing, Egyptian law has provided for national
ownership of cultural artifacts like the Mask since at least 1951. While it will
ultimately be for the Court to determine whose interpretation of Egyptian law is
correct, any such determination is a matter of law that did not need to be pled,
and in fact was not pled, on the face of the complaint. Thus, any such
contention of the Museum’s is beyond this Court’s consideration on this
motion."
[Blogger's sidebar:
United States of America v. One Lucite
Ball containing Lunar Material (one Moon Rock) and One Ten Inch by Fourteen Inch
Wooden Plaque is a federal district court case where authorities
successfully seized a moon rock originally given by President Richard Nixon to
Honduras. The rock was bought for $50,000 by claimant Alan Rosen, who purchased
the moon rock from a retired Honduran military officer. The moon rock went
missing from the Honduran presidential palace during the 1990's. The case
resulted in the forfeiture of the lunar rock to the federal government in 2003
after government lawyers argued that the rock was stolen from Honduras and
smuggled into the United States in violation of 19 U.S.C. 1595a(c)(1)(A), the
same statute invoked in the
Ka-Nefer-Nefer case.]
http://culturalheritagelawyer.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/prosecutors-reveal-details-of-theft.html
