Indicted in the antiquities laundering case involving France Museums and the Louvre Abu Dhabi, the French curator will be dismissed when he returns to his duties within the Franco-Saudi development project launched in 2018.
The French agency for the development of AIUla (Afalula), an important archaeological site in Saudi Arabia, announces the departure of Jean-François Charnier, from his post of scientific director, on September 30th. This announcement follows the indictment on July 28 of this archaeologist, a former executive of the France Museums agency, suspected of having favored the sale of Egyptian antiquities to the Louvre Abu Dhabi despite doubts about their origin.
Jean-François Charnier joined the French agency in August 2018. Created following an agreement signed in April 2018 between Emmanuel Macron and Crown Prince Mohammed Ben Salman, the structure’s mission is to implement, in collaboration with the Saudi authorities, the cultural and tourist development of the AlUla region, in the northwest of the Arabian Peninsula.
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Appointed head of the agency’s Culture & Heritage division, Jean-François Charnier’s mission was to lead the development of archaeological sites in the region and to support the creation of a future museum complex. At the heart of AlUla, the Madain Saleh site is the subject of a long-standing scientific partnership between France and Saudi Arabia. The site, known to house the spectacular remains of the Nabataean city of Hegra, has been excavated since 2002 by a French archaeological mission.
The French agency for the development of AIUla, however, deemed it preferable to separate from the expert because of the Emirati affair in which he now finds himself entangled. Le Figaro noted at the beginning of August the disappearance of the page dedicated to the French archaeologist on the Afalula site.
sprawling investigation
Targeted by justice for “money laundering by facilitating the false justification of the origin of the property of the perpetrator of a crime or offence” and placed under judicial supervision, Jean-François Charnier is suspected of having favored the sale to the Louvre Abu Dhabi of looted Egyptian antiquities, despite doubts about their fraudulent origin. One of the pieces in question, an Egyptian royal stele stamped with the name of Tutankhamun and, above all, provided with a false certificate, was acquired in 2016 by the Louvre Abu Dhabi. An alert launched in 2018 by an Egyptologist on the dubious provenance of the vestige would have remained a dead letter.
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As part of this sprawling investigation conducted by the Central Office for the Fight against Trafficking in Cultural Property (OCBC), the former boss of the Louvre, Jean-Luc Martinez, was also indicted in May and placed under control. judicial. “If it were established that illicit works were acquired by the Louvre Abu Dhabi, it would be, like the institutions it was responsible for leading, a victim of traffickers”his lawyers told the Figaroat the beginning of summer.
In 2020, several Parisian antique dealers and experts, including the president of the Pierre-Bergé house and a former curator from the Louvre, were arrested on suspicion of laundering more than a hundred “blood antiquities”. These objects, looted in Egypt, Libya, Syria or even Yemen on the fringes of armed conflicts, would have been exported secretly and then introduced on the international art market. According to Unesco, the illicit trade in cultural property ranks third among global criminal activities, after drug trafficking and arms trafficking.