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Karl Schembri
Joseph Schembri, the Maltese trader who sells Mesopotamian artefacts and Maltese antiquities singled out by international institutions for their suspicious origins, has failed to return from abroad since he was unmasked by this newspaper last week.
In an email message sent early Thursday morning from the UK – the day when he was expected to return – Schembri threatened me saying I would “pay dearly” for the stories published about him, which he said were “all lies”.
His email reads: “Wait and see. … there’s nothing true in what you wrote. You’ll pay dearly, I guarantee this.”
A police report about the threat has been filed. Investigations made by this newspaper reveal that Schembri sent his email on the day he was expected to return to Malta from the UK, through an internet account administered from premises called Adhara Building in Adastral Park, Martlesham Heath, Ipswich, Suffolk.
In a previous email sent from Malta, Schembri had said he would return from abroad on Thursday 28 April, and he had also agreed to sell two Roger II copper coins dated 1130 AD for US$25. The payment was to be sent to his Mellieha residence. Until yesterday night, Schembri failed to show up at the Malta International Airport.
The Mellieha resident was on the Iraq Museum International’s alert list three weeks ago as he was anonymously trading a set of Babylonian cylinders and stamp seals dating around 1,000 BC, together with other historical items from Malta.
On eBay, the internet auction website, Schembri auctioned his items under the name “qvadricavincente”, including Mesopotamian artefacts believed to have been looted from Baghdad as well as old Norman coins found in Malta, a Roman silver pendant, and an Islamic glass bangle dating back to 7-9 century AD.
The International Council of Museums (ICOM) put Mesopotamian cylinders and stamp seals on its red list of Iraqi antiquities at risk and issued warnings via Interpol to track down their traders.
Following a MaltaToday investigation, the trader was found to be a Maltese national who resides in a villa in Santa Marija Estate, Mellieha, from where he planned to ship some of his items.
On 18 April, Schembri informed a bidder for one of his items that he would be “away from the islands from Thursday April 21 to Thursday April 28”.
The police had details about Schembri two days before he left Malta, after they were alerted by the Superintendent of Cultural Heritage about the online auctions, but he was allowed to travel abroad unchecked. Calls made by this newspaper to his house during the week remained unanswered.
Since his last batch of items auctioned on eBay in mid April, Schembri or qvadricavincente, has not yet advertised any other items on the auction site under the same nickname.
In the same week in which Schembri was trading his items as qvadricavincente, another trader from Malta was auctioning some very similar Mesopotamian and Maltese artefacts under the pseudonym ‘bjderstr566’, who on another site is listed as ’Joseph Schembri’.
In April he was auctioning a Neo-Babylonian seal dating 900-700 BC and a Persian cylinder seal dating 550 BC. Other artefacts included a fifth century BC Carthaginian glass head pendant, an Islamic glass vase, a Roman gold stirrup ring, and a Byzantine silver ring.
The same bjderstr566 was found on eBay to have operated with three different nicknames since 2003: meliteao, punici and hotelman_20. Meliteao is on eBay’s deals records as having auctioned Roman and Carthaginian arrowheads from Ontario, Canada, while punici is listed as having auctioned cuneiform tablets in 2003, also from Canada.
karl@newsworksltd.com
Karl Schembri
This is the third consecutive week MaltaToday is highlighting suspicious internet trading of Maltese and international heritage treasures, and yet up until today, such items are being freely traded and exported at the click of a mouse.
In the last seven days, one seller on eBay who calls himself “coins_dealer” from Malta has been auctioning several coins dating back to the times of the Knights of St John, featuring the faces and coats of arms of various Grand Masters.
While the sale and acquisition of such items may not be illegal, their export is, unless authorised by the Superintendent of Cultural Heritage, as specified in the Antiquities Act.
Yet these auctions take place regularly on the internet auction giant and remain totally unregulated.
Despite lacking provenance details, most of the items are believed by archaeology experts to be genuine, though probably unclean.
The Baghdad Museum looting two years ago provided a massive amount of historical booty to be auctioned on internet, together with thousands of other world heritage artefacts being traded everyday.
EBay only removes illicit antiquities from its website very reluctantly and only when provided with proof from national authorities that artefacts on auction are illegal.
In October last year, the British Museum came in conflict with eBay in its national treasure hunt when faced with thousands of gold and silver rings, coins, jewellery and costume items from Roman Britain to medieval and Elizabethan times changing hands on the website, undermining the museum’s chances for acquiring or cataloguing them.
The Superintendent of Cultural Heritage, Anthony Pace, who would have to authorise the export of such items from Malta, says he has never been asked for such authorisation from internet traders. But he says it is impossible to monitor the internet with his present staff complement.
Pace had alerted the police to Schembri’s items on sale in mid April after he was informed about them by MaltaToday. Contacted last Thursday, Pace said the case was still being investigated but added that he had not yet read the MaltaToday report as he did not read Sunday newspapers.
MaltaToday also sought the comments of Culture Minister Francis Zammit Dimech, but calls left with his secretary and on his voice mail were unreturned.
The Chairman of Heritage Malta, Mario Tabone, had expressed his concern that the items on auction had no specifications of their provenance and questioned how they ended up in private hands, but said that was as far as he could go, as the monitoring of cultural heritage falls under Pace.
“The export of historical artefacts is definitely problematic,” said Heritage Malta’s Chief Executive, Antoinette Caruana. “We condemn any illegal sale of historical artefacts. If were to acquire any objects, we are morally bound to get documented evidence of their provenance, but when it comes to the trading of such items, we’ll inform the Cultural Heritage Superintendent. Unfortunately that’s as far as we can go.”
Internationally, efforts to recoup the stolen items from Iraq have only been launched recently, and the global clandestine trafficking of historical artefacts remains a vastly unregulated business.
The international market in stolen artefacts is worth as much as $8 billion a year, and is comparable in size to the market for illegal drugs, according to the FBI.
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