Egypt court jails ex-Italian envoy for smuggling artefacts

CAIRO: A Cairo criminal court sentenced a former honorary Italian consul to 15 years in jail in absentia on Wednesday for smuggling antiquities out of the country, a judicial source said.

Ladislav Otakar Skakal, Italy’s former honorary consul in Luxor, attempted to smuggle 21,855 artefacts from various historical eras in 2017, according to the prosecutor general. These included over 21,000 golden coins, 151 miniature figurines, five mummy masks, 11 pottery vessels, three ceramic tiles dating to the Islamic period and a wooden sarcophagus.

Italian police found the sizeable loot in a diplomatic shipping container heading from the port city of Alexandria to Salerno in Italy in 2017. Skakal’s trial, along with other accomplices, began in September last year.

Prosecutors found that the antiquities were smuggled with the aid of Raouf Ghali, the brother of former Hosni Mubarak-era finance minister Youssef Ghali. A verdict is expected next month for Skakal’s alleged Egyptian accomplices.