Description

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How does transnational crime interact with legal companies andgovernments? Are legal actors primarily victimized by transnationalcriminals or are the two connected by collaborative relationships? Andhow are these crimes often transformed into legitimate activities?This book seeks to answer these and related questions. Its main topicis the translational illicit art and antiquities trade, based on a thoroughempirical study of data gathered in France, Italy, the Netherlands andother places around the world. The reader will encounter a large numberof case studies, from auction houses selling looted antiquities to violentrobberies of museums and castles, and much more.Added to this is an analysis of the way legal and illegal actorsinteract around all kinds of transnational crimes, from terrorism to drugtrafficking, cigarette smuggling, trade in blood diamonds and covertoperations of intelligence agencies around the world. This analysis istranslated into an analytical model to understand the interfaces betweenthe legal and the illegal, and in fact the absence of a meaningfuldistinction between "upper" and "underworld." After reading this book, one will never think in the same way about transnational crime and theillicit art and antiquities trade as a most interesting part of it. Dr. Edgar Tijhuis is the academic director of the Association forResearch into Crimes against Art (ARCA) in Amelia (Italy). He isresponsible for the Postgraduate Certificate Program in the Study of ArtCrime and Cultural Heritage Protection. Furthermore, since 2009, hehas taught criminology modules within the ARCA program.Edgar Tijhuis got his Phd at Leiden University in the Netherlands, and he holds degrees in Political Science, American studies and Lawfrom the University of Amsterdam, and studied in Austria and SouthAfrica. He has been studying art crime for over fifteen years and wasone of the first scholars to set up a PhD study around this topic andexplore the interfaces between the licit and illicit trade, as well as thewider context of transnational crime.This is one of the first books under the imprint ARCA Publications, a series of scholarly books on art crime published by the Association for Research into Crimes against Art (www.artcrimeresearch.org). Profits from the purchase of this book and others in the series go to supporting research into art crime and cultural heritage protectio.