Renewals for Bolivia, Egypt and Greece Point to the Need for Major Reform

This is what I said more or less at today's CPAC hearing.  I hope to have a summary done when I can, but it will probably be delayed due to travel commitments.

Thank you for this opportunity to speak on behalf of the International Association of Professional Numismatists.

IAPN takes no position on the proposed renewals of Cultural Property Agreements with Bolivia, Egypt, and Greece, but opposes any import restrictions on coins.  Furthermore, IAPN believes that the Trump Administration must reform the system to ensure more transparency and fairness for American collectors and the trade.

There currently are no restrictions on Bolivian coins and Bolivia’s former Director General of Cultural Property has written there is no basis to impose new restrictions on Spanish Colonial and early Republican era coins that also served as legal tender in the U.S. until 1857.

In social media, the State Department has claimed, “these agreements help protect U.S. museums and collectors, support lawful trade, and deter illegal trafficking of cultural property,” but import restrictions on Egyptian and Greek coins demonstrates that narrative is misleading at best.

The current import restrictions on coins are grossly overbroad.   The Egyptian restrictions cover all coins struck in Egypt to 1750 A.D.  The Greek restrictions cover numerous coin types through the 15^th century.  One cannot assume that these coins were “first discovered within” and were “subject to export control by” Egypt and Greece, fundamental requirements of the Cultural Property Implementation Act.

Let us discuss Egypt first.  The elephant in the room is that Egypt’s authoritarian rulers nationalized all antiquities in private hands in 1983 without compensation.  Before that time, there was a booming antiquities trade in Egypt, with millions of objects leaving the country legally but without the paperwork now deemed necessary to “prove” legal export.  

For coins, the situation is exacerbated because the State Department evidently latched onto the argument that Egypt had a “closed monetary system,” to justify maximalist import restrictions on all coins made in Egypt before 1750 A.D.  However, that system was meant to keep foreign coins “out,” not Egyptian coins “in.”  Moreover, despite ample scholarly evidence demonstrating that such coins circulated regionally or even internationally, the State Department simply ignored that factual record and, in the latest renewal, added restrictions on Roman Imperial, Byzantine and Ottoman coins made in Egypt.

The restrictions for Greece go well beyond what the Greek government originally requested. Greece’s Ambassador told CPAC that its request only concerned antiquities that have been found exclusively on Greek territory.  Yet, the State Department has  imposed broad restrictions on ancient and medieval coins that circulated regionally as well as internationally.  As indicated in IAPN’s comments, that  has resulted in Customs detaining and seizing coins merely because they look “Greek.”    Furthermore, those restrictions even apply to coins legally exported from Greece’s fellow European Union members despite the fact that Greece is part of the E.U.’s common export control regime.   That raises the question: Does the State Department really consider coins legally exported from the E.U. to be “trafficked” cultural property?

So what to do?  Short term, coin types that did not exclusively circulate within the confines of modern Egypt and Greece should be delisted and any new CPA with Greece should treat any coins legally exported from sister EU countries as legal exports under that CPA. 

Going forward, the best long term solution would be for the Trump Administration to order the preparation of designated lists be subject to the Administrative Procedure Act, and for any detentions, seizures and forfeitures of cultural property to be subject to the Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform Act of 2000.  The former would require the government to justify the inclusion of specific coin types in the designated lists. The latter would help  ensure that import restrictions only apply in situations where there was some evidence that the coin in question was illicitly exported from a country with a cultural property agreement or emergency restrictions after the effective date of the governing regulations.

Thank you for your consideration of the views of the micro businesses of the numismatic trade.