How organised are cultural heritage crimes? Spain as a case study

• In Event: WG Organized Crime and Criminal Networks Panel 1. Organized crime & illicit markets

Abstract

In recent years, the characterisation of the trafficking of cultural property as a form of serious organised crime has gained prominence in the literature, but also in EU and Member States’ policies on the protection of cultural heritage. Trafficking in cultural goods is one of the EU’s priorities in the fight against serious and organised crime. However, limited work has been done on the identification and quantification of case law related to this phenomenon. In an effort to increase empirical knowledge, this paper presents the results of a quantitative study of all the judgments (N = ) delivered by the Spanish provincial courts in trafficking of cultural goods cases between 2014 and 2024 available in the Spanish Judicial Documentation Centre's public case-law database (CENDOJ). The aim of the research was to determine how many cases of trafficking had been tried in court, the demographic characteristics of offenders, the types of trafficking involved, and the role of intermediaries in the illicit market, in order to compare that information with the data reported in previous studies. The results confirm what previous research has shown: the disorganised nature of the illicit market in cultural goods, dominated by mainly local based, small groups and actors. This work therefore highlights the need to address the prosecution of trafficking in culture property in a holistic way, considering that in practice we could not find an inherent relation between organised crime and TCG. Our findings are at odds with the insistence of EU bodies and part of the specialised literature on the characterisation of cultural property crime as a serious organised cross-border crime.

Authors

• María-Ángeles Fuentes Fuentes-Loureiro, University of A Coruña

• Patricia Faraldo-Cabana, Universidade da Coruña