ABOVE: Details from stolen art objects being sought by the FBI Art Theft Program (from left, one version of Munch’s The Scream, a clay pot which was among the artifacts stolen from an American Indian cultural center in Indio, Calif., and Munch’s Madonna). Trafficking in art is now thought to be a $6 billion a year business.

The world black market in stolen art is worth $6 billion a year, Prof. Amareswar Galla, vice-president of the International Council of Museums, informed a UNESCO workshop this week, and is the second largest such illegal trade after narcotics. It’s no coincidence, either, as Prof. Galla explained, since drug cartels are apparently sinking their profits into art and artifacts or using them as currency in cross-border deals.

“Trafficking in cultural property,” as the UNESCO people call it, is especially problematic in Asia and the subcontinent because, as Dr. Galla said in this story from the Navhind Times, “the 1954 Hague convention on the subject is extremely euro-centric and does not address the concern of asian nations.” Essentially, billions of dollars worth of artifacts, and the priceless cultural heritage that goes with them, are being sucked out of the developing world and used to fund black markets in the West. Welcome to civilization.

LINK: Navhind Times > Trafficking in art objects next only to narcotics trade: UNESCO