Accused of having sold stolen works to the Louvre Abu Dhabi, merchant Roben Dib imprisoned in Paris The golden sarcophagus of Nedjemankh, displayed in Cairo in October 2019, after its return by the Met. The major New York museum had acquired the object in 2017 for 3.5 million dollars when it had been stolen from Egypt six years earlier. The Emirati branch of the French institution and the Metropolitan in New York are among the clients of the gallery owner involved in the trafficking of cultural property stolen in Egypt. The Lebanese-German gallerist and art dealer Roben Dib, suspected of laundering an Egyptian sarcophagus stolen in Egypt during the 2011 revolution, was indicted and imprisoned in Paris on March 14. The forties would have been extradited to France after indicating that he wanted to collaborate with justice, his lawyers told the Journal du Dimanche , confirming information from the Canard Enchaîné . Director of a gallery in Hamburg, Roben Dib is said to have participated in concealing the gleaming golden sarcophagus of the Egyptian priest Nedjemankh, in charge of the cult of the ram-headed god Harsaphes. The antiquity dated from the 2nd- 1st century BC, towards the end of the Lagid period, formerly kept in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo where it was stolen, had passed through Dubai before landing in the German gallery . Arrived some time later in the hands of the Parisian gallery owner and antique dealer Christophe Kunicki , it was sold in 2017 to the Metropolitan Museum of New York (Met), for 3.5 million dollars. The art dealer would then have restored the object and provided him with false certificates professing a legal sale of the sarcophagus in 1971. Extensive antiquities trafficking network According to French investigators quoted by The Art Newspaper , Roben Dib is also suspected of having been linked to Christophe Kunicki in the concealment and sale of five important Egyptian antiquities for more than 50 million euros at the Louvre in 'Abu Dhabi. Charges rejected by Roben Dib, who claims to have legitimately acquired the various objects in question. The set, which includes another golden sarcophagus, was sold in the 1970s to the Cairo art dealer Simon Simonian, who has since died. An international investigation launched by the American, French, German and Egyptian heritage authorities had established the fraudulent origin of the sarcophagus of Nedjemankh acquired by the Met. Informed of the situation, the American museum had immediately interrupted the exhibition created around the sarcophagus and returned the object to Egypt in 2019. The investigation had brought to light a vast antiquities trafficking network , whose operations money laundering had fooled the experts of several major museums, including those of the Louvre Abu Dhabi. A judicial investigation opened in February 2020 led to a wave of police custody in the art world and the indictment of Christophe Kunicki and art dealer Richard Semper. seen in Le Figaro