The British Museum has initiated legal proceedings against a former employee, who is estimated to be responsible for the theft and destruction of at least 1,800 artifacts.
The Supreme Court ordered the “opening” of files from eBay and PayPal platforms, especially the account of the suspect and former curator Dr. Peter Higgs on eBay. According to the British Museum, these files contain information about the sale of objects on the internet.
The court was informed that Dr. Higgs intends to challenge the museum’s claims. He was too ill to attend the proceedings, according to the BBC, but the court was informed that the suspect was aware of the hearing.
The museum told the court that it now has evidence that Dr. Higgs was selling items from the collection for over 10 years, with items ending up in the hands of at least 45 buyers worldwide. He covered his tracks by “using aliases, creating fake documents, and falsifying records.”
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The court ordered Dr. Higgs to share any information he has regarding what was sold from the collection and where the objects are located.
The museum emphasized that many of the missing and stolen items belong to collections stored in warehouses and were not recorded in catalogs. The museum’s legal representatives reported to the court that a check of a storage space in 1993 showed that there were 1,449 unrecorded items, however, during a check of the same space in 2023, it was found that 1,161 of them – just over 80% – were missing.
Dr. Higgs, who worked in the museum’s Greek antiquities department from 1999 until the summer of 2023, denied all allegations.
