by Mike Sharkey
Staff Writer
Jacksonville native Frederick Schultz, Jr. was convicted earlier this week of conspiring to sell ancient artifacts that had been illegally removed from Egypt.
The case has drawn the undivided attention of the international art community and is expected to have wide repercussions for the antiquities trade.
Schultz, a Bolles graduate and son of former Florida State Senate president and local developer Fred Schultz, was charged with receiving stolen Egyptian artifacts and conspiring to conceal the theft. Schultz owns and operates Frederick Schultz Ancient Art in New York City. Until last spring, he was head of the National Association of Dealers in Ancient, Oriental and Primitive Art.
In a statement, the organization said it “regrets” the conviction of Schultz and added that it regarded the case as “an isolated incident that does not reflect the high standards and prudent practices of the association’s members.”
A sentencing hearing is scheduled for May 30. The maximum sentence is five years in jail and a $250,000 fine.
In a statement to the Daily Record, Schultz’s father agreed with the defense team that his son’s partner, who spent time in prison after being convicted of smuggling, is to blame.
“My son, a well-respected New York dealer in ancient art, was found guilty of conspiring to sell antiquities which had been taken out of Egypt unlawfully,” he said. “Our entire family is shocked. There will be an appeal.”
The prosecution said Schultz violated the U.S. National Stolen Property Act, which makes it a federal offense to traffic foreign goods known to be stolen. Schultz claimed he didn’t know the artifacts were stolen.
In 1983, Egypt enacted a law making all Egyptian antiquities over 100 years old of historical significance to be state property. At the center of the case was whether the United States would enforce Egyptian law.
“The looting of artifacts deprives nations of their heritage and humankind of valuable archaeological knowledge,” U.S. Attorney James B. Comey said in a statement following the verdict. “This conviction sends the message that the United States will aggressively pursue such crimes and those who traffic in looted artifacts.”
According to an article written by Celestine Bohlen in The New York Times, the case was built on expert testimony, bank transfers and correspondence between Schultz and another art dealer, Englishman Jonathan Tokeley-Parry, which was compiled by Scotland Yard. The article described how the loot was concealed, using labels of an English pharmaceutical company dating back to the early 1900s, which were modified to appear very old. Original lettering was replaced with a bogus insignia.
Tokeley-Parry testified against Schultz, saying the doctored labels were attached to the stolen objects to give the appearance that the items in question did not originate in Egypt but rather, were a new discovery. According to The New York Times, attorneys for Schultz attempted to discredit Tokeley-Parry’s testimony based in part on the fact that Tokeley-Parry spent 1997-2000 in a British prison after his conviction on “charges of assisting in the handling of stolen property.”
Several years after failing in the late 1970s to smuggle Italian antiquities out of Rome, Tokeley-Parry endeared himself to an Egyptian family that dealt in ancient Egyptian artifacts. Soon after, in the summer of 1991, Tokeley-Parry and Schultz, who were friends, formed a pact to smuggle the Egyptian antiquities to the United States. By that time, the antiquities trade had been nationalized by the Egyptian government in an attempt to keep the artifacts in possession of Egyptian curators and out of the hands of smugglers.
Unfortunately, according to the Times, all that did was create an even bigger demand for the stolen artifacts and force smugglers to get even more creative. Tokeley-Parry testified that one of the first items he offered Schultz was the sculptured head of Egyptian pharaoh Amenhotep III, which Tokeley-Parry described as “sopping wet” because it was so freshly out of the ground.
According to the indictment, Schultz bought the Amenhotep III artifact from Tokeley-Parry and sold it to someone in London for $1.2 million.
The case was a high-profile test of the National Stolen Property Act (NSPA), which was created to help squelch the flow of all illegal foreign artifacts into the United States. Just as importantly, the Act also seeks to help those historically significant objects stay in their countries of origin and remain what they are —national treasures.
At debate was the legal definition of stolen. Often, defendants in such a case have argued that “stolen” in NSPA terms and “stolen” in a foreign nation’s ownership laws mean different things. The courts have responded by referring to Law 117, which supports the 1983 Egyptian law that considers antiquities to be property of the state.
According to an article in The Art Newspaper written by Martha Lufkin, Schultz and his attorneys have argued that Law 117 “defined antiquities too vaguely to give him notice of what it covered ...”
The trial, which began Jan. 28 in New York, could have lasting ramifications on the entire art collecting and dealing industry. Though his attorneys plan to appeal the decision, if his appeal fails it could significantly slow down the flow of new artifacts, even legal ones, to every museum and art dealer in the United States. In a Jan. 30 New York Times article by Bohlen, lawyers representing the famous auction house Christie’s said if the 1983 Egyptian law is upheld, it “could have a catastrophic impact on the art world and the public interests it serves.”
Jonathan Bloom, an attorney with Weil, Gotshal & Manges, which represents Christie’s and three other dealers’ groups, said the decision could have ramifications that will negatively affect the way future American art dealers are able to obtain artifacts.
“It is fairly obvious the kind of impact this can have on the art market,” said Bloom. “Had this legal regime been in place in say 1875, then we wouldn’t have the kind of collections that we have today in American museums.”
The judge in the trial, Judge Jed Rakoff, took a stance that pleased archaeologists worldwide. Rakoff was quoted in The Art Newspaper as saying, “Artifacts of ancient Egypt inevitably invite the attention, not just of scholars and aesthetes but of tomb-robbers, smugglers, black-marketeers and assorted thieves. Every pharaoh, it seems, has a price on his head (at least if the head is cast in stone) and if the price is right, a head-hunter will be found to sever the head from its lawful owner.”
In closing arguments, defense attorney David Spears argued that Schultz had been duped by Tokeley-Parry. Spears also argued that Schultz had not been aware of the 1983 Egyptian law.
Assistant U.S. attorney Peter Neiman countered that Schultz was well aware of the law.
“The man’s business is buying and selling Egyptian antiquities. Anybody in the business for 10 minutes would know there is nothing out there that is fresh out of Egypt,” he said.
Measures are now being taken to assure similar criminal cases are held to a minimum or eliminated altogether. A new unit of the Customs service is being established to track stolen art.
The U.S. Customs Art Fraud Investigations Center has been created, said Raymond Kelly, the commissioner of the U.S. Customs Service. The center will be based in New York and will inherit a caseload of about 40 with an operating budget of $800,000 to $900,000.
In an article in The Art Newspaper by David D’Arcy, Kelly said the new unit is a direct result of stolen art becoming “a big business that’s getting bigger...”
Kelly said the unit’s top priority will be to assure antiquities either stay in their native lands or enter the United States legally.
“There’s more of an interest on the part of people that have the money to buy valuable works of art,” said Kelly in The Art Newspaper. “In addition, there is heightened sensitivity in the international community. Countries now realize, more than ever before, that antiquities have been stolen from them. They want them back. This unit is now in one place, so it will be easier for us to deal with foreign governments.”