Cops search billionaire’s apartment for stolen art

NEW YORK: Authorities seeking illegally acquired antique artworks have searched the apartment and office of a prominent New York billionaire and philanthropist, prosecutors said.

As many as nine pieces were reportedly seized. The target of the inquiry, 77- year- old Michael Steinhardt, made his fortune as a hedge-fund manager.

A spokesman for Manhattan district attorney Cyrus Vance Jr would neither confirm nor deny the seizures on Friday but did confirm the searches.

Steinhardt is a well-known collector of Greek antiquities and even has a gallery named after him and wife Judy in the Metropolitan Museum, not far from their Fifth Avenue apartment. Steinhardt told The New York Times he had no comment on the matter “for now”.

Copies of search warrants provided to AFP, and signed by a New York judge on Jan 3, indicated that investigators were seeking about a dozen antiques from Greece and Italy, acquired between 1996 and 2011 for sums ranging from US$25,000 to US$380,000 (RM100,000-RM1.5mil).

The latter sum was spent in 2006 to acquire a 45cm white oil vessel that depicts the figures of a woman and a young boy in a funerary scene dating from around 420 BC.

A spokesman for the prosecutor’s office would not say whether Steinhardt might face any charges, but the search warrants list criminal possession of stolen property as a potential violation. — AFP