Schultz Convicted
Commentary

By Steven Vincent

Imagine this scenario: government prosecutors accuse you of attempting to sell several objects which they contend your business partner stole from a foreign country - even though that country never made a claim for the objects, and its law defining ownership is written in a language incomprehensible to you, while your own nation's statutes on this point are unclear. Moreover, in building their case against you, prosecutors rely mainly on the testimony of your business partner - a convicted criminal and con artist who, out of motives of profit and revenge, repeatedly lied, misled you and manipulated you. Worse, because of the nature of the charges, your government does not have to prove you actually `stole' these objects - just that you believed that even `one' object was stolen when you tried to sell it. As if that weren't enough, even if you did not realize what you were doing was wrong, but the jury thinks that you `consciously avoided' discovering the truth, you are guilty. This, in essence, is the legal situation that Frederick Schultz, a well-respected New York antiquities dealer, has faced since his indictment by the US government last July on a single count of conspiring, from 1991 to 1996, to `possess, conceal, store, barter, sell and dispose of' objects that were `stolen' from Egypt. On 12 February, Schultz's nightmare turned real when a federal jury in Manhattan convicted him of the charge. According to press accounts, jurors sympathized with Schultz but believed that the weight of evidence, largely the testimony of Schultz's associate Jonathan Tokeley-Parry, proved that he conspired to violate US stolen property laws. He faces a maximum of five years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000; sentencing takes place on 30 May. The verdict sent shockwaves among supporters of the international antiquities community. From their perspective, Schultz fell foul of over-zealous government prosecutors and confused court rulings which relied on Egyptian law (specifically Law 117, which asserts state ownership over all objects discovered in Egypt after 1983) to define what constitutes stolen property in America. Moreover, they note, Egypt has never filed a claim for any of the objects Schultz and Tokeley-Parry handled. `The Schultz decision has significant legal implications,' says Ashton Hawkins, former counsel to the board of trustees of New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art. `Although traditionally "ignorance of the law" is no excuse, surely a defendant in New York should not be convicted of conspiring to commit theft on the basis of a foreign statute published only in Arabic - a statute, moreover, that was obscure and generally unenforced in Egypt in the early 1990s.' Others see an immediate `chilling effect' throughout the antiquities market. `With Fred's conviction, no one is going to touch anything that they can't prove left a respective "source" country prior to whatever date that country claims ownership over cultural objects,' says one pro-trade lawyer. Why is this a problem? For argument's sake, let us imagine that decades ago a collector received a crate filled with 1,000 Egyptian antiquities. The chances are that they received only a single permit or piece of documentation. That means that hundreds of perfectly legal Egyptian objects lack the kind of provenance that zealous critics of the antiquities trade now demand. `No one will go near those objects,' the lawyer continues. `Worse, museums have any number of undocumented objects - they are now subject to potential civil cases.' And that is only the beginning, others maintain. As the regulatory web of laws, international treaties and so-called bilateral `understandings' tightens around the antiquities trade, they argue, smaller regional and university museums - not to mention future institutions yet to be built - will find it difficult to begin or expand their antiquities collections. And not only antiquities. State ownership laws can also apply to other objects, trade supporters claim, leading to a situation where out-of-control `retentionist' policies cripple the worldwide circulation of historical, ethnographic and artistic treasures. (Of course, this scenario depends largely on the source nation in question: for example, while nations like Turkey and Italy have frequently turned to US courts to retrieve illegally exported objects, countries like China prefer to simply buy them back on the market.) How did these circumstances come about? In brief, because of a combination of vague US court rulings (particularly the infamous 1977 `United States vs. McClain' case, in which a US court used Mexican, and not American law, to define what constituted stolen archaeological property) and the American Justice and State Departments which see supporting the cultural patrimony claims of source nations as a way to placate allies and strengthen international relationships. (Or, as a State Department official who helps develop US policies toward the antiquities market once told me: `We're in the business of keeping other countries happy.') Other people point to government prosecutors who see these patrimony cases as headline-grabbers, pitting them against a trade which, at best, lacks organization, political clout and the will to mount a serious legal challenge to the increasing regulatory climate. `Older antiquities dealers who have made millions in this field grumble about kicking in $10,000 to sue the government,' says the art lawyer. `Younger dealers haven't yet awoken to the clear and present danger they face.' Then there are the facts of the case. According to the government's charges against Schultz, from 1990 to 1994 Tokeley-Parry travelled to Egypt, where he purchased numerous antiquities from peasants and construction workers who had found them in the ground. He then smuggled the objects out of Egypt in violation of Law 117, eventually selling or consigning them to Schultz, who, prosecutors claimed, knew of Tokeley-Parry's activities. The most valuable of these antiquities was a bust of 18th dynasty pharaoh Amenhotep III, which Tokeley-Parry sneaked out of Egypt in 1991, and which Schultz offered to several US museums before eventually selling it to a South African dealer in 1992 for $1.25 million. Among fifteen other Egyptian objects that federal prosecutors claim Tokeley-Parry and Schultz conspired to sell were various reliefs, heads and votive figurines, in addition to a 6th dynasty limestone striding figure. In order to disguise the origin of these objects, prosecutors further charged, Schultz told prospective buyers that the artefacts originated from the `Alcock Collection' - in reality, a fictitious collection supposedly dating from the 1920s, for which Tokeley-Parry created several fake `Alcock' labels doctored to look as if they were decades old. Slim, handsome and articulate, the Cambridge-educated Tokeley-Parry, a 50-year-old former British cavalry officer and world-class antiquities restorer, made a compelling witness for the prosecution. Through his correspondence, diaries and direct testimony, he presented a picture of Schultz and himself conspiring to traffic in Egyptian antiquities taken out of the country in violation of Law 117. At turns witty, condescending and contrite, he riveted the jury with accounts of how he disguised and smuggled the Amenhotep through Egyptian customs, or created, with painstaking effort, false `Alcock' labels. At the same time, however, another picture of Tokeley-Parry emerged: a narcissistic manipulator, proud of his smuggling exploits (he often signed correspondence to Schultz with a James Bondian `003', and printing business cards identifying him as a `smuggler and fabricator of Egyptian antiquities'), as well as possibly vengeful ex-felon. In 1994, Tokeley-Parry was arrested for handling, in the jurisdiction of London, numerous artefacts that he had smuggled out of Egypt, and, in 1997, and sentenced to a six-year term. (According to trial evidence, Tokeley-Parry was so despondent about his legal fortunes that he attempted to commit suicide in 1996 by drinking hemlock.) In 1999, when the FBI was already looking into Schultz's activities, Tokeley-Parry wrote to the dealer suggesting that if Schultz testified to the English authorities that a Scotland Yard detective threatened him to keep him from testifying at Tokeley-Parry's trial, he, Tokeley-Parry would refuse to cooperate with the FBI's investigation of Schultz. Schultz refused, and Tokeley-Parry eventually served three years of his term. Schultz's lawyers tried to undermine Tokeley-Parry's credibility, calling him a `master predator' who was always `scheming, planning and plotting against Fred Schultz', and whose unreliable testimony was motivated by his anger at Schultz's refusal to assist his attempt to discredit Scotland Yard. Arguing that prosecutors based the conspiracy on `flimsy, ambiguous bits of circumstantial evidence', the attorneys attempted to convince the jury that Schultz had no knowledge of either Egyptian antiquity laws or Tokeley-Parry's chicanery regarding his smuggling activities and fabrication of the Alcock Collection. Instead, he had been `unbelievably gullible' in trusting the Englishman. Their arguments, however, failed to convince the jury, and, in deliberations that lasted less than five hours, they convicted the dealer. What is to come? An appeal, say Schultz's attorneys. Specifically, they plan to question the `McClain' ruling and the legal precedent which states that an object leaving a foreign nation in violation of that nation's state ownership laws becomes stolen property once it enters the US. And if they fail in the Appellate Court, Schultz's defenders vow, they will consider the US Supreme Court. But those fights are for the future. For now, Schultz's colleagues, observers and even some of his harshest critics agree at least on one point: what we witnessed in that Manhattan courtroom may have been justice, but it was certainly a tragedy as well.