For years, art dealer Georges Lotfi helped investigators root out antiquities traffickers. Now prosecutors are hunting for him:
What better way to distract from criminal activity than to point the finger at others?against longtime antiquities dealer and collector Georges Lotfi, which is outlined in
Lotfi provided information to investigators for years as they pursed looted antiquities and even provided a “hand-drawn” diagram of how international smuggling networks operate. It was a tip from Lotfi in 2018 that led to the seizure of the gilded coffin of Nedjemankh from the Metropolitan Museum of Art that wasInvestigators say Lotfi’s role as a whistleblower gave him an inflated sense of confidence that his own illicit activity would never be uncovered.
The address listed on the warrant is a post office box in Tripoli, but Lotfi at one time owned an apartment on Fifth Avenue so he could be close to the Met, according to theAccording to the extensively detailed warrant, a copy of which was provided to Artnet News, theinvestigation into Lotfi began “indirectly” in July 2017, when the unit appliedThe head had been excavated from the archeological site of Eshmun in Lebanon amid its decades-long civil war, and was subsequently loaned to the Met.
Then, in 2018, a third Eshmun antiquity with the same provenance was recovered by Lebanese customs officials from a container that Lotfi had shipped from New York to Tripoli.