Who are the dealers?

Drusus Minor sculpture now at Cleveland Museum

I recently read an article on the website Saving Antiquities For Everyone (SAFE) about the Cleveland Museum of Art buying 'important' ancient Roman and Mayan antiquities. Although this may not be recent news for many of you, it brought to my attention many of the questions that we discuss when we talk about the import and export of antiquities, and their acquisition. 

The Museum stated that the two pieces were bought "in accordance with American art museum guidelines" which aim at halting the looting of antiquities by stipulating that museums should not buy artifacts unless they were documented as being outside their country of origin before 1970, or were legally exported thereafter. This date, 1970, is crucial to the modern laws and regulations for artifact possession, as it is the date of the international UNESCO convention aimed at prohibiting and preventing illegal import, export and transfer of ownership of artifacts.  

Apollo Sauroktonos sold in 2004 

The museum bought the ancient head sculpture of Drusus Minor from the company Phoenix Ancient Art run by dealers Hicham and Ali Aboutaam, who in 2004 sold the museum an ancient bronze statue of Apollo Sauroktonos with gaps in its ownership history. This acquisition raised complaints that the museum was encouraging looting by purchasing such objects with questionable provenance. 

Who are these dealers, and should we deem them trustworthy to legally manage our antiquities?   Hicham and Ali Aboutaam have both faced legal charges related to the misuse of ancient artifacts: Ali was convicted in absentia in Egypt in 2003 on charges of smuggling, and Hicham pleaded guilty in New York on June, 2004 to falsifying a customs document to hide the origins of an ancient silver drinking vessel which the gallery later sold for $950,000. These are both serious accusations for the managers of a Gallery which claims to have "one of the antiquities trade's most vigorous and stringent procedures of due diligence for establishing the provenance and ownership history of its objects." While Ali's lawyer claimed that his client's charges were "ridiculous" and politically motivated, why was he suspected of doing such things? and why did Hicham falsify a customs document? What did he have to hide? Perhaps these two are not directly looting, but does that follow that because they are not the direct plunderers, they are not helping the trade of plundered items? 

It seems to me that someone dealing in such a precarious field would make sure to be very diligent about their image and actions in order to be deemed trustworthy. Personally, I'd be suspicious if these two offered me anything. Don't we know that at least one of them can falsify documents? And how many can we supposed were and have been falsified without being detected as such?

Perhaps, in this specific case of the Drusus sculpture the provenance is sound. But I know that every time that I read a mention of a new acquisition by a museum, I'll ask myself the same questions, and hopefully, you will too, concerning the provenance and authenticity of the artifact, who the dealer was, and what their record/reputation is.