Giacomo Medici (art dealer)

Giacomo Medici is an Italian antiquities smuggler and art dealer who was convicted in 2004 of dealing in stolen ancient artifacts. His operation was thought to be "one of the largest and most sophisticated antiquities networks in the world, responsible for illegally digging up and spiriting away thousands of top-drawer pieces and passing them on to the most elite end of the international art market".

Thanks to a long-running major investigation by the Tutela Patrimonio Culturale (or TCP, the unit of the Italian Carabinieri (military police) specializing in protecting that country's cultural heritage), Giacomo Medici was eventually charged, tried and convicted for his key role in an extensive and highly lucrative international antiquities smuggling ring. For nearly 40 years, the group organised the systematic looting and theft of some of the most valuable Mediterranean artefacts ever found, "laundering" these stolen objects through corrupt international dealers and major auction houses, who then sold them on to major institutions and collectors around the world. Probably the best-known object linked to the Medici gang is the so-called "Sarpedon krater", a unique, signed Attic "red figure" wine vessel dating from the 5th century BCE, which was painted by Euphronios, one of the most famous ceramic artists of the ancient world. The krater was eventually shown to have been looted from a previously unknown Etruscan tomb near Cerveteri, Italy, in December 1971, and later sold to the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1972 for the then record price of US$1 million.

The staggering scale and value of the so-called "Medici conspiracy" was revealed in the 1990s by two fortuitous but connected events. The first was the downfall of former Sotheby's employee James Hodges, who in 1991 was tried and convicted of various charges related to his theft of antiquities and money from his employer. Unfortunately for Sotheby's - but very fortunately for investigators - prior to his arrest, Hodges had stolen or photocopied a number of internal Sotheby's documents which indicated that the company was behaving dishonestly and unethically in regard to the trading of antiquities. After Hodges' crimes were discovered, he tried to make a deal, using the stolen documents as a bargaining tool, but when Sotheby's refused, Hodges took revenge by passing the material to investigative journalist Peter Watson. Hodges' documents sparked a series of British press investigations into Sotheby's activities, and although not conclusive in their own right, they would also provide vital corroboration for the even more sensational discoveries made by Italian authorities in the mid-1990s.

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