[MSN] Cracking a Smuggling Ring- Col Ferdinando Musella]

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Cracking a Smuggling Ring



Ferdinando Musella, the head of Italy's art police and a seasoned Mafia
investigator, is leading the search for looted antiquities in American
museums- while still on the trail of an elusive Caravaggio.

By Kelly Devine Thomas



Lieutenant Colonel Ferdinando Musella, tall and tan with jet-black hair
and dark eyes, strides into the ARTnews offices with a pair of Ray-Ban
sunglasses pushed back on top of his head. The operations chief of Italy's
art police, Musella speaks Italian and French but little English and is
therefore accompanied by Angelo Ragusa, a warrant officer in his unit who
acts as translator.

     The chief has an hour to spare before attending a press conference at
which New York City police commissioner Raymond Kelly will return to
Italian representatives a marble head that thieves hacked off an
ancient statue of Dionysus in 1983, which resurfaced recently at
Christie's.

     Musella, a central figure in Italy's widening investigation into the
trade in antiquities looted from Italian soil, is in the United
States to further press his country's claims against American
museums. A tough negotiator with a steely gaze, Musella has been
working with his unit for the past decade to crack a smuggling ring
that allegedly sold objects to top collectors and museums around the
world, including the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, the
Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Museum of Fine Arts in
Boston, the Princeton University Art Museum, and the Cleveland Museum
of Art, among others.

     In the wake of a precedent-setting accord reached earlier this year
with the Met, which agreed to restitute six antiquities, including a
16-piece set of Hellenistic silver, to Italy in exchange for
long-term loans of comparable artifacts, it appears that other
American museums "are going to be more cooperative than in the past,"
Musella says. Still, he warns, "if they are not going to be
cooperative with us, we will still go forward with the
investigation." Asked which museums are involved in his inquiries,
Musella responds, "It is easier to ask which museums are not
involved."

     The day before his visit to ARTnews,  Musella met with Jane A.
Levine, assistant U.S. attorney for the southern district of New
York, with whom Italy has worked closely for years. Initially Musella
had thought his work in the United States could be wrapped up by
October. But now, he says, "based on our successful meeting
yesterday, we still need more time." Asked if the investigation might
lead to prosecutions in the United States, Musella nods
affirmatively, "Yes."

     Investigations carried out under Musella's watch so far have led to
Italy's prosecution of Italian dealer Giacomo Medici, American dealer
Robert E. Hecht Jr., and Marion True, the former antiquities curator
at the Getty Museum. Medici was convicted in Italy of Trafficking in
looted artifacts after a 1995 raid on his Swiss warehouse turned up a
vast archive of information on the antiquities trade; he is currently
appealing a ten-year prison sentence. Hecht and True are standing
trial in Italy on charges of receiving stolen antiquities and
conspiring to traffic in illegally acquired artifacts (both deny any
wrong doing). Musella says the 86-year-old Hecht, an alleged
ringleader of the illicit antiquities trade, is "for us one of the
ten most wanted."

     Evidence seized during raids in 2002 and 2005 on Basel warehouses
used by Sicilian dealer Gianfranco Becchina, meanwhile, is providing
additional information about acquisitions of allegedly looted
objects, Musella says (Becchina is currently under investigation for
his part in the smuggling operation). Most of the material found in
the warehouse raids has led Italian investigators to the United
States. "Here we have found the majority of the objects stolen from
Italy," says Musella. "We will finish our investigations here and
then start in Europe and in other countries."

     The divorced father of one child, Musella was born in 1962 in Salerno
in Southern Italy. When he was 16 he followed his father's footsteps
into the army, enrolling into a training school for the Carabinieri,
a national military police network organized under the Italian armed
forces. Beginning as a horse patrolman, Musella rose through the
ranks to eventually work drug trafficking, terrorism, and
Mafia-related cases, beginning in 1993. During this period he was
instrumental in helping apprehend Raffaele Pernasetti, one of Italy's
most wanted fugitives and a member of Rome's notorious Magliana crime
syndicate. In 1996 Musella joined the art squad, known as the Comando
Carabinieri Tutela Patrimomio Culturale (Command for the Preservation
of Cultural Heritage), and was promoted to operations chief within a
year.

     In addition to its status as a division of the military, the
Carabinieri art unit is a branch of Italy's ministry of culture.
Since its founding in 1969, the unit has recovered some 185,295
artworks and 455,771 archeological objects, and has brought criminal
charges against more than 16,000 individuals.

     Musella and the 70 people under his command, 45 of whom are active
investigators, scored a major coup when they were able to recover
what the Italian government deemed the world's rarest and most
valuable looted antiquity: an ivory head of Apollo dating from the
first century B.C., reportedly worth $50 million. Illegally excavated
and smuggled out of Italy in 1995, the head was discovered in the
possession of London dealer Robin Symes, an alleged coconspirator of
Medici's and Hecht's who, according to Musella, had lined up an
American collector willing to pay $10 million for it. The head was
returned to Rome in 2003 and is now displayed in its own room in the
National Museum of Rome. Musella speaks of writing a book- part
romance, part thriller- about its recovery. Perhaps, he suggests, the
book will be made into a movie.

     Among Musella's priorities is recovering Caravggio's Nativity With
Saints Francis and Lawrence (1609), whose theft from a Sicilian
church more than 35 years ago was detailed in Peter Watson's 1984
book the Caravaggio Conspiracy. In terms of importance, Musella
considers the painting to be the "numero uno" object stolen from
Italy that is still at large. While it is believed to be in the
possession of the Mafia, Musella says, "we don't know where it is."
At one point, Gerlando "The Rug" Alberti, the chief of a famous
Sicilian crime family in Palermo, buried the painting in a box along
with drugs and millions in cash in case he "needed to leave the
country or needed it for negotiations," Musella says. A witness
tipped off investigators to its location, but by the time police
arrived, the box had been moved.

     As for his own collecting, the only objects Musella has acquired over
the years are law enforcement pins from colleagues around the world.
Regarding those collectors and institutions that prefer to collect
antiquities removed illegally from Italian soil, Musella says their
actions are not only harmful but unnecessary. "You can ask for a
loan. We have enough cultural artifacts to loan the U.S."



Kelly Devine Thomas is a senior writer for ARTnews.