Stocktake: ‘Virtuous’ billionaire surrenders stolen art

Billionaire and former money manager Michael Steinhardt was in the news last week after surrendering 180 stolen antiquities worth an estimated $70 million (€62 million).

Banned for life from acquiring antiquities, Manhattan district attorney Cyrus Vance jnr said Steinhardt “displayed a rapacious appetite for plundered artefacts without concern for the legality of his actions”.

A famously successful investor before retiring in 1995, Steinhardt reflected in 2014: “I thought there must be something more virtuous, more ennobling to do with one’s life than make rich people richer.”

Fair point, but maybe relying on what Vance called a “sprawling underworld of antiquities traffickers, crime bosses, money launderers and tomb raiders” to expand your art collection isn’t the answer either.