September 04, 2014

How ancient art from Aleppo finances ISIS

editor:	Murat Suner

ISIS' assets amount to 2 Billion €. A part of that comes from the illegal deal in stolen ancient artwork from Syria, in particular from Aleppo.

Stefan Weber, director of the Museum for Islamic Art Berlin says that an increased amount of arabic artwork from Syria is being offered to him. Trading with stolen artwork is the third largest illegal business after the smuggling of drugs and weapons, summing up to a billion euro business globally.

A Titel,Thesen,Temperamente reportage explains how art trafficking is currently being organized through an international mafia, buying the objects from Jordan, Syria and Turkey, and selling them through middlemen to the Gulf States, Europe and America, where they mainly become part of rich people's collections.

Apparently, not only Turkey's role in the Syrian conflict is more than dubious, also middlemen in Istanbul act as the main hub in trafficking of stolen art.

Cheikhmous Ali, a Syrian Archaeologist, says the market mechanisms are not different from how the dealing with drugs work. After being brought out of Syria the artworks receive false documents and so appear as legally certificated objects prior to being offered at auctions and art fairs.

And so, art buyers and collectors become indirect financiers of ISIS' war in Syria and Iraq.