The American authorities have ordered the return to Italy of a Roman statue illegally imported into the United States, at the center of a judicial proceeding in which the name of Kim Kardashian, protagonist of reality and social networks, is found. The American decision is based on the opinion of an archaeologist who believes that the fragment of a statue, seized in 2016 at the port of Los Angeles, was “looted, smuggled and illegally exported”.
The court documents examined by the French news agency AFP designate the name of the US star as ‘importer0’ refer to an invoice for the sale of the statue dated 11 March 2016. According to the reconstruction, a Belgian art dealer was hired to decorate Kim Kardashian’s mansion near Los Angeles. A spokesperson for the star, however, denied some American media linking Kim Kardashian to the controversial statue, telling AFP that it was not “accurate information”.
The statue is referred to in American proceedings as “Fragment of Athena Samian of Myron”. The expert Italian archaeologist who examined it describes it as “classical style, it represents a copy of an original Greek sculpture”. The work, which was part of a five-ton cargo, was seized in the Port of Los Angeles in May 2016.