Serop Simonian, the alleged head of an Egyptian antiquities trafficking ring that duped the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Louvre Abu Dhabi, quietly left Paris for Hamburg in January, leaving law enforcement authorities confused and uncertain about their next moves in the case against him.
Simonian’s lawyer, Chloé Arnoux, denied he had escaped in an interview with The Art Newspaper. “Serop Simonian, who is aged 83, suffers from health problems and needs the assistance of a walker, was authorised to leave Paris by a magistrate on 31 December, to go back to his hometown. After 15 months of detention, the magistrate considered that he could be released,” she says. “Mr Simonian was then placed under European judicial control and must check in every month at a local police station. He was authorised to go back to Hamburg, where he is in an assisted living facility near his family. But the French prosecutor appealed the decision and it was overturned two weeks later by the court of appeal.”
According to the French daily Libération, the court's ruling states that “the risk of flight is significant as Simonian handles a network and funds which would allow him to flee”. Since then, according to legal sources, Simonian has not responded to French summons to return to jail in Paris. It now remains to be seen if France will renew an arrest warrant and, if so, how German authorities will react, considering Simonian’s health. So far, there has been no official reaction.
The trafficking network with which Simonian is allegedly involved is suspected of having pocketed almost €60m from the sale of pieces such as the famous golden sarcophagus, a colossal head of Cleopatra and a Tutankhamun stele to institutions including the Metropolitan Museum and the Louvre Abu Dhabi. Matthew Bogdanos, an assistant District Attorney in Manhattan and head of its art trafficking unite, who initiated the investigation, says the items were all looted at different periods in Egypt. Simonian was arrested in September 2023 in Hamburg, where he owned a gallery, and transferred to Paris. He was charged with gang trafficking and money laundering. Interviewed in the summer of 2023 by The Art Newspaper, he denied any wrongdoing.
According to sources close to the investigation, interviewed by the Parisian judge, Simonian and the director of his gallery, Roben Dib, have blamed each other for these transactions. This latest incident is seen by a defence lawyer, who asked to remain anonymous, as “a sign of the breakdown of a criminal investigation which has dragged on for years” and led to charges against eight German and French dealers and curators, including the Parisian expert Christophe Kunicki, who is considered as a key element of the network, and the former head of the Musée du Louvre, Jean-Luc Martinez, charged for “complicity” for his involvement in the Louvre Abu Dhabi’s acquisitions.