The treasures were put up for auction in Monaco but the iffy provenance raised suspicions.
Three 3,000-year-old bracelets have been returned to Romania by Belgium after it was discovered that they had been illegally excavated and exported out of the country to be sold at auction for tens of thousands of euros.
The items were officially repatriated to the Romanian ambassador on Feb. 19 in a ceremony at the Museum aan de Stroom in Antwerp.
Two of the gold treasures dating from around 1000 BC were offered for sale at a Monaco auction house in 2020. Worth an estimated at €80,000-€100,000, they had been listed as the sale’s top lot and featured on the catalog’s cover.
The catalog entry claimed the mysterious bangles had been discovered in a ditch in the Flemish village of Houtem, which raised suspicion as the Celtic jewelry design was completely inconsistent with the traditions of Western Europe.
„The owner of the bracelets was a Belgian citizen who told the auction house that he found then around 1980 while doing work around his house. Belgian police carried out a house search where they found a third bracelet,” according to Ioan Șandru, a Romanian prosecutor.
It was however connected instead to the Eastern Carpathians in modern-day Romania.
„They were made from native gold, washed in the sands and brooks which come down from the Apuseni mountains and are part of a category of artifacts that belong to early Thracian culture Why were they passed off as Celtic? It’s easy. In Western Europe on the antique market the word”Celtic” is well-known. But there is no way they are Celtic,” said Ernest Oberländer-Târnoveanu, curator of the National History Museum.
A judicial investigation found that the precious pieces of jewelry were illegally excavated in Romania and their most recently deceased owner had acquired them there in exchange for an antique hunting rifle. They were then illegally exported out of the country along with a third bracelet, which was found in the late owner’s house.
All three were returned as a set to Romania.
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