Advertisment

A web portal for stolen artworks

author-image
CIOL Bureau
Updated On
New Update

GRENOBLE, FRANCE: Two French auctioneers have set up a new web portal, www.stolen-and-wanted.com for recovering stolen art works that are never recovered. Illegal traffic in art works is the 3rd largest illegal traffic in the world and 95 percent is never retrieved. The information stored on the website is registered by theft victims with the aim of helping them recovering their art objects through two innovative concepts: Identification of the works on the basis of their references in authoritative publications and rewards offered by the victims to increase the chances of recovering the stolen objects.

Advertisment

The use of bibliographic references of the stolen works with the artist's catalogue is the basic idea. This is far more appropriate than the most detailed descriptions as they can greatly hamper reselling possibilities and since no dealer may put the work up for sale without mentioning them. While access to the website is totally free of charge so as to maximise the number of visits to the site, the service also gives the victim the possibility of offering a reward at every step of the recovery process such as locating the work on Internet, locating it physically, arresting the thieves and the receivers and lastly, actually recovering the work. The amount of those awards is entirely up to the theft victim.

The cost of putting the information on line is a fixed rate, independent of the value of the stolen goods. It varies with the chosen duration: The standard rate is €300 for five years and premium rate: is €500 for an unlimited duration (it is not unusual to recover an object more than 30 years after it disappeared).

For the theft victim, this amount is comparable to the cost of a classified ad for a much more significant exposure, or else to that of the insurance premium he would have had to pay to cover the risk of theft of the sought-after work for a whole year. This service also guarantees any buyer that the work he is purchasing is not a stolen work (UNIDROIT Convention: “Due Diligence” burden exists on the purchaser of an artwork).

www.stolen-and-wanted.com is different from other existing services that are not as easy to visit (paid access etc.) or that list art works which are often poorly photographed or inadequately described. The site is currently available in French, and soon will be in English, German, Italian, Spanish and Dutch.

tech-news