Antiquities dealer who exposed theft at British Museum dies aged 61 | British Museum

The student turned the antiquities dealer who revealed it the theft of hundreds of artifacts from the British Museum died at the age of 61.

Dr Ittai Gradel, from Denmark, warned British Museum and the police after being able to buy a lot of museum artifacts on eBay over the years.

Gradel died of kidney cancer days after receiving a rare medal from the museum in recognition of what its director called his “great contribution”. According to and the BBC.

A police investigation is still ongoing, three years after the museum reported the theft to Scotland Yard after being pressured by Gradel. Before he died in a Danish hospital, Gradel – who would have been a key witness in any trial – told the BBC it was “upsetting” that he would not live to see how the case would be resolved.

Gradel tried to convince the museum to investigate the theft in 2021, when he became suspicious of the jewels he had collected in the museum. was being sold online for as little as a few pounds. He accused the museum of stoning him and “sweeping everything under the carpet”.

Two years later, following its investigation, the museum announced that 2,000 objects in the collection, mainly precious stones and gold jewelry from the ancient Mediterranean region, were stolen, missing or damaged.

The incident, which made headlines around the world, led to the resignation of the museum’s director, Hartwig Fischer, who admitted that “it was clear that the British Museum did not respond as fully as it should have” to Gradel’s early warnings.

Gradel said that he and other antiquities dealers unwittingly bought items from the British Museum. He said he doubted that chief curator at the museum they had stolen, and provided a PayPal receipt with the name of the manager they believed to be selling them to, Peter Higgs.

Higgs, a Greek archaeologist, denies any wrongdoing. He worked at the British Museum for 30 years before being made redundant.

But the museum allayed Gradel’s concerns, even after forcing a seller to return an olive stone he bought on eBay.

Five months later, the museum’s deputy director, Jonathan Williams, wrote to Gradel to say that all the items had been read and his claims were groundless. It was later discovered that the thief had forged a handwritten note stating that a precious stone had been stolen in 1963.

In presenting Gradel with the British Museum medal before his death, the curator, Nicholas Cullinan, wrote that it was “a token of our esteem…

Gradel was born in 1965 in Haifa, Israel, to a British father and a Danish mother, and moved to Denmark when he was two years old. He moved to the UK at the age of 18 and quickly fell in love with the British Museum.

His cancer was first diagnosed in 2010 and returned in 2022. He said he knew he “had to finish this before I died”.

He also said: “I didn’t do the museum any favors by exposing these thefts, because it destroyed the museum.”

In total, Gradel signed over 360 items back to the British Museum that he bought online. The museum has announced its plans digitize its collection.