Designated Antiquities Ports, More Documentation Could Slow ISIS Cultural Goods Trade, Say Experts

“That’s a huge hole,” Rep. Ann Wagner, R-Mo., said. Gerstenblith agreed, and said she hopes it will be “plugged very soon.” The Office of Foreign Assets Control and CBP didn't comment. But ultimately, civil forfeiture-activating sanctions will probably not be enough to affect the black antiquity market, Gerstenblith said. “Only if you have the threat of criminal enforcement and the possibility of jail time will you perhaps really start to reach the market,” she said.

The level of documentation required to pass through supply chains with cultural antiquities is often paltry, and “a lot could be done” to demand documentation of the names of buyers and sellers, Gerstenblith said. Requiring clean bills of sale could be one way to complicate ISIS smuggling efforts, said hearing testifier Robert Edsel, Monuments Men Foundation board chairman. “It's going to be a disincentive for people with lots of money to be out there buying these things asking, ‘Where is your piece of paper? I don't want to buy this thing unless it's been cleared.’… Is it a huge challenge for us from a technology standpoint? Sure. It's work.” But Edsel added that there is “no downside” to acting against the illicit trade, and that stopping it is simply a matter of political will.

Currently, under a process codified in the Convention on Cultural Property Implementation Act, countries must ask for U.S. assistance to impose import restrictions on cultural items. Pending in Congress, the Protect and Preserve International Cultural Property Act (here) would require the U.S. President to restrict imports of specified archeological or ethnological material from Syria, and the legislation includes a mechanism to bypass the convention’s requirement for countries to submit restriction requests. To thwart illegal imports and money laundering, Gerstenblith pointed to that legislation and the pending Prevent Trafficking in Cultural Property Act (here), which would require CBP and Immigration and Customs Enforcement to work together to cut off the flow of illegal cultural property imports and to hold perpetrators accountable.

She also pitched the possibility of relegating cultural art imports to designated ports, allowing customs agents to become specialized in recognizing and interdicting illicit goods flows. “I'm the first to admit this is a very obscure and narrow area of the law, and the number of people who can be trained either as agents or among assistant United States attorneys should be limited, and we can concentrate the expertise and, therefore, have better outcomes of lawsuits, criminal prosecutions, and the like,” she said. Additionally, more resources should be given to U.S. attorneys’ offices and to the FBI’s art crime team to boost law enforcement efforts, Gerstenblith said. Shawnee State professor Amr Al-Azm suggested setting up a sort of labeling system for cultural antiquities, similar to a car’s vehicle identification number, which would require buyers and sellers to refer to a logbook specifying sellable objects, in order to transact.

Task force member Rep. Dan Kildee, D-Mich., asked whether the government could incentivize brokers, dealers, and other parts of the supply chain to maintain and report relevant information that could be useful to law enforcement authorities, by extending them safe harbor protections. “The real problem is no one of those parties has enough information to associate it with anything else, so it becomes noise,” said ARIS Title Insurance Corporation Chairman Lawrence Shindell, who testified at the hearing. “[U]ntil you create a means to organize the information holistically, a very complex amalgam of information driven by the high mobility and international nature of the market becomes the ultimate obstacle that has to be overcome.”