Mystery company ties accused temple raiders to art world elite

[soothsayer]

Link to tweet

?s=21


ICIJ
@ICIJorg
#FincenFiles found a company exchanged millions of dollars in cash and relics with alleged art traffickers.

But the company itself is impossible to trace – even by the banks handling the transactions.

Mystery company ties accused temple raiders to art world elite - ICIJ
icij.org
https://t.co/NJdTykSKLY?amp=1

Where in the world is Pantheon Worldwide? Not even its own bank can say.

Snip
They pulled ancient Buddha heads out of the ground in war-torn Afghanistan and stole idols from temples in India. They cracked open shrines in Nepal, and in Cambodia bought an 11th-century statue of the Hindu god Shiva on the black market.

According to indictments filed in New York last year, a network of art thieves and traffickers extracted thousands of precious relics from archaeological sites across Asia and sold them to museums, elite galleries and wealthy private buyers.

Prosecutors say the group includes suppliers, restorers and New York art dealers who fabricated documents describing the origin of the antiquities to camouflage the looting.

A confidential banking document obtained in the FinCEN Files investigation offers a rare view into the murky supply chain that delivers valuable antiquities to auction houses and major Western museums. It reveals a shadowy shell company called Pantheon Worldwide Limited that exchanged millions of dollars in cash and relics with the alleged traffickers, according to the document, while baffling compliance officers at its own bank, London-based Standard Chartered Bank.

[CurtEastPoint]

1. Probably Hobby Lobby as the skank Christian CEO has traded stolen antiquities before.

[Talitha]

5. Hobby Lobby was the first thing I thought of, too.

The CEO had the artifacts labelled 'samples' or something.

[keithbvadu2]

2. Christianity and the Bible honored, enhanced, exemplified, glorified and displayed by theft and fra

https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=9294433

https://www.democraticunderground.com/10029293684

http://www.newsweek.com/hobby-lobby-iraq-antiquities-evangelicals-632434

Christianity and the Bible honored, enhanced, exemplified, glorified and displayed by theft and fraud by the Hobby Lobby Museum..

[crickets]

3. Well, if compliance officers at the bank are baffled, why did they let it go on?

I know, for the money. But come on.

[BComplex]

4. The world needs to STOP ghost corporations/LLC's from forming. The laws have to change across

the world. They are hiding child traficking & human trafficking, thefts, drugs, and weapons. They are just a criminal's cover, and it needs to stop everywhere.

Nothing good is going on behind a ghost company.