Director, Antikenmuseum Basel

1967 –1975 Studies of Classical Archeology as major, Greek Philology and Old History as minor at the Universities of Basel and Bonn; Graduation in Basel in1975
1975 – 1978 Member of the Istituto Svizzero in Rom
1979 – 1985 Assistant at the University of Basel, Postdoctoral lecture qualification in 1983
1986 Nomination as Associate Professor
1986 – 1992 Curator at the Basel Museum of Ancient Art and Ludwig Collection
Since 1993 Director Antikenmuseum Basel

 

Director, Cultural Heritage Resource, Stanford Archaeology Center

Neil Brodie graduated from the University of Liverpool with a PhD Archaeology in 1991 and has held positions at the British School at Athens and the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research at the University of Cambridge, where he was Research Director of the Illicit Antiquities Research Centre. Since October 2007 he has been Director of the Cultural Heritage Resource at Stanford University’s Archaeology Center. He was co-author (with Jennifer Doole and Peter Watson) of the report Stealing History commissioned by the Museums Association and ICOM-UK to advise upon the illicit trade in cultural material. He also co-edited Archaeology, Cultural Heritage, and the Antiquities Trade (with Morag M. Kersel, Christina Luke and Kathryn Walker Tubb; 2006) Illicit Antiquities: The Theft of Culture and the Extinction of Archaeology (with Kathryn Walker Tubb; 2002) and Trade in Illicit Antiquities: The Destruction of the World's Archaeological Heritage (with Jennifer Doole and Colin Renfrew; 2001). He has worked on archaeological projects in the United Kingdom and Greece.

 

Curator, America Department, Museum der Kulturen, Basel

Alexander Brust (1967) is a social and cultural anthropologist. Since 2002 he works as curator of the Americas at the Museum der Kulturen Basel. During the last 15 years he served as a consultant for Latin American indigenous communities to develop alternatives for the preservation of local cultural heritage. Currently, he is on a sabbatical to realize research about community museums and visual culture in Southern Mexico.

 

Lawyer, Australia

Duncan Chappell, a lawyer and criminologist, is currently a Professorial Fellow at the University of Wollongong’s Center for Transnational Crime Prevention and an adjunct Professor in the School of Criminology at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada. A former Deputy President of the Australian Federal Administrative Appeals Tribunal, and former Director of the Australian Institute of Criminology, Duncan Chappell has held senior academic posts in Australia, Canada and the United States, and has been a consultant to government and international bodies including the United Nations, International Labour Organisation [ILO] and the Commonwealth.

Duncan Chappell has researched and published widely on a range of crime and criminal justice topics, including art crime and trafficking in cultural property. Among his most recent publications on this subject are ‘Perspectives on the organisation and control of the illicit traffic in antiquities in South East Asia’[ with Alder and Polk: ISPAC 2009] and ‘Fakes and deception: Examining fraud in the art market’ [ with Polk: Praeger 2009 ]

 

Board Member, Basel Institute on Governance

Thomas Christ (born 1953) is presently the Managing Director of DHL Logistics in Switzerland. He was born in Zurich, studied History of Art and Law at the University of Basel and concluded his academic education with a PhD in fundamental copyright questions in the film industry.
After various jobs at the Supreme Court in Basel and UBS Switzerland he started an international career in the world of global transportation. He became CEO of Goth & Co. AG, Switzerland in 1984, was CEO of Panalpina (France) S.A. from 1990 to 1998 where he managed a critical French turnaround situation, and finally joined the DHL (former Danzas) group in 1999. During his activities in the environment of international trading he spent various years of his business life in New York, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Paris and Milan and is now based in Basel.
Besides sporadic publications and lectures on professional topics in the field of Cargo and Data Management he remained interested in specific themes and aspects of art and wrote various books on historical and contemporary topics. Among publications on the New York Subway Graffity Scene as well as on Drawings of Keith Haring, Wiese and Schwabe Verlag in Basel edited illustrated publications on ‘The Castles of the Ile de France’ (1994), ‘The Socialist Realism – Views and considerations on Socialist Realism in the Sowjet Era’ (1999) and ‘Wladimir Lebedew and the Russian Avantgarde’ (2004).
Thomas Christ is a father of 4 children, lives in Basel and besides other local activities enjoys his membership in the Board of the Foundation for the Museum of History of Basel.

 

Senior Vice President, Christie’s

Monica Dugot is the International Director of Restitution and Senior Vice President at Christie's, coordinating Christie's restitution issues globally. Prior to joining Christie's, Ms. Dugot served as Deputy Director of the New York State Banking Department's Holocaust Claims Processing Office (‘HCPO’), where she coordinated the Art Claims branch of the HCPO's work and assisted owners and heirs in seeking to recover art collections that were lost or looted during the Nazi-era. During her almost eight year tenure at the HCPO, she represented New York State on art restitution matters at venues including the Washington Forum on Holocaust-Era assets and the International Conference on Holocaust Era Looted Cultural Assets in Vilnius, Lithuania. Ms. Dugot is on the Advisory Board of Claremont McKenna College’s Center for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide, and Human Rights and has served as a member of the NYC Bar Association's Art Law Committee.

 

Prof Till Förster is Professor for Social Anthropology at the University of Basel. He has held this position since 2001. Previously, he has been Professor and Director of the Africa Center of the University of Beyreuth and Associate Professor for Social Anthropology at the University of Cologne.

Prior to pursuing the academic career, Mr. Förster has gathered extensive experience in development work through his involvement in a variety of projects in Côte d'Ivoire, Burkina Faso, or Niger, which dealt with such diverse issues as the implementation of biogas plants, irrigated rice cultivation, land use and land ownership, or integrated rural and urban development.

His particular research interests lie in the analysis of statehood, the risks of the failing states, and the growing importance of non-state actors, as well as questions of cultural identity and new forms of cultural interaction, participation and representation in African societies.

Federal Department of Justice and Police, Switzerland

Jean-Robert Gisler is an archaeologist. He holds a doctorate and a habilitation qualification in Classical Archaeology from the University of Fribourg in Switzerland, where he took on the duties of Assistant and senior lecturer after assuming the lead of the editorial team of the Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae (LIMC) in Basel over a period of ten years. Since 1999 he is coordinating the fight against the illicit trafficking of cultural property at the Federal Department of Justice and Police in Berne. He is still actively teaching Classical Archaeology at the University of Fribourg and has been recently appointed as a UNO expert in this matter.

 

Curator for African and Oceanic Art, Museum Rietberg Zurich

1975: Promotion law school University of Zurich; 1977 - 1981: Working for Zurich municipality Court
1978 - 1982: Studies of social anthropology, University of Zurich
1982 - to present day: Curator at the Rietberg Museum (produced 21 exhibitions on African, Oceanic and Indonesian Art with publications)
1996- 2007: Deputy Director at the above Institution
1982 - 1985: field research in Ivory Coast, and many other African countries.
1990- 2001: Member of the board of ICOM Switzerland (International Council of Museums);
President 1998 - 2001; 1999 - 2004 Member of the Swiss Unesco Commission

 

International Committee of the Blue Shield

Christophe Jacobs works for the International Council on Archives, developing an Emergency Management Programme for the archival community. Member of the French Blue Shield Committee since 2003, he organized the mobilization of volunteers for the two Blue Shield missions sent to Köln in April and August 2009. He is also a board member of the Association of National Committees of the Blue Shield [ANCBS] since December 2008.

 

Chairman, European Fine Art Foundation (TEFAF)

Ben Janssens was born in 1957 in The Netherlands, where he went to school and later to university in Utrecht. In 1980 he moved to England to study History of Art at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. He began his career with the venerable firm of Spink and Son Ltd, where he worked in the Chinese department for eleven years, and was appointed a Director of the firm. In 1997, Ben Janssens initiated his own gallery, Ben Janssens Oriental Art.
Ben Janssens has been a Board member of the European Fine Art Foundation since 1989, serving as Executive Committee member from 2003 before becoming its Chairman in January 2007.

 

Director, Federal Office of Culture (FOC), Switzerland

Jean-Frédéric Jauslin was born in Le Locle (canton of Neuchâtel, Switzerland) in 1954. After studying mathematics and computer science at the University of Neuchâtel, he received his doctorate in computer science from the federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich. He first worked in the private business, heading the computer department of an insurance company.
Upon being appointed director of the Swiss National Library in 1990, he undertook a comprehensive reorganization of the library in matters of operations management, data conversion and the cataloging and conservation of the library holdings. In 2002, he was named president of the CENL (Conference of European National Librarians), which gathers together the directors of over forty European national libraries.
On April 1st, 2005, Jean-Frédéric Jauslin was named director of the Swiss Federal Office of Culture (FOC). Within the federal government, the FOC serves as the center for all cultural affairs. It promotes cultural activities in all their variety, striving to set up the conditions for their independent development and continued growth. As such, it is divided into the following branches: cultural promotion, cultural heritage and communication, the Swiss National Library and the Swiss National Museum. The FOC is attached to the Federal Department of the Interior.
Jean-Frédéric Jauslin is married and the father of three sons.

 

International Association of Dealers in Ancient Art (IADAA)

Dr Ursula Kampmann (*1964) academic studies have been in Ancient and Medieval History and Archeology. She deals with Cultural Property Issues on behalf of IADAA, the International Association of Dealers in Ancient Art. She has participated in excavations, worked for different German and Swiss auction houses and for various museums. She is chief editor of the MünzenRevue, the most important numismatic journal for collectors. Therefore she is well qualified to examine issues which combine the interests of dealers, collectors, archeologists and museums.

 

Lawyer, Herrick, New York

Lawrence M. Kaye represents a wide range of domestic and international clients in complex litigations and commercial transactions.
Among Larry's other accomplishments, he is noted for his representation of foreign governments, victims of the Holocaust, families of renowned artists and other claimants in connection with the recovery of art and antiquities. Larry was a lead attorney in the landmark case of Federal Republic of Germany v. Elicofon, in which two early masterpieces by Albrecht Durer, stolen at the end of the Second World War, were recovered and returned to the Weimar Art Museum. He represented the Republic of Turkey in its successful efforts to recover the fabled Lydian Hoard antiquities, long held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and some 1,800 ancient Greek and Lycian coins which Connoisseur Magazine called “The Hoard of the Century”; as well as the heirs of the Russian artist, Kazimir Severinovich Malevich, in connection with their claims against New York's Museum of Modern Art, Harvard University’s Busch-Reisinger Museum and the City of Amsterdam's Stedelijk Museum. He presently represents many museums, collectors and foreign governments in connection with a variety of cultural property matters.
Larry served as the Legal Advisor to the Republic of Turkey’s delegation to the Diplomatic Conference held in Rome in June 1995, at which the UNIDROIT Convention on the International Return of Stolen or Illegally Exported Cultural Objects was adopted.  He writes and lectures extensively on international art litigation and the repatriation of cultural property. He has presented papers at numerous academic and business symposiums, including, among others, forums sponsored by the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, the All-Russia State Library for Foreign Literature in Moscow, the United Kingdom Institute for Conservation, the American-Turkish Council, the Institute of International Business Law and Practice, Lloyd’s of London Press, the American Bar Association, the Association of the Bar of the City of New York, Columbia University, Brown University, University of Pennsylvania, Bard College, New York University, Princeton University, the American Institute of Archaeology, and many law schools, including Harvard, Villanova, Fordham, Texas Tech, Rutgers, Cardozo, Willamette and the University of Texas.
While pursuing his law degree, Larry was Editor-In-Chief of the St. John's Law Review. He has served two terms as a member of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York’s Art Law Committee and was the Program Chairman for their Cultural Property Roundtable in November 1996.

 

Coordinator, Works of Art Unit, Interpol General Secretariat

In 1977, Karl-Heinz Kind joined the German Federal Criminal Police Office, the BKA, in Wiesbaden Germany, which at the same time functions as the INTERPOL National Central Bureau for Germany. He mainly served in the area of property crime and was nominated Head of the art theft unit at his home administration in the early 1990s.
In 1993, Mr Kind joined the INTERPOL General Secretariat in Lyon, France for the first time until 1997 and worked within the General Crime Branch where he was in charge of cultural property crime. During this period, he dedicated a lot of efforts in the creation in 1995 of the global INTERPOL works of art database. In 1997, Karl-Heinz Kind returned to his national office in Germany for a four years period, again being responsible for property related crime. Since 2001, he has again been seconded to the INTERPOL General Secretariat in Lyon where he is now Coordinator of the Works of Art Unit within the Sub Directorate for Drugs and Criminal Organizations.
Mr Kind oversees INTERPOL’s activities in this crime area with a focus on upgrading its support for member countries, the strengthening of strategic partnerships with other international organizations, and the further development of investigation and information tools for the international law enforcement community. Some of these tools have also been made available to the wider public. The accessibility to INTERPOL’s works of art database since mid August 2009 is the most recent example.

 

Representative, International Institute for the Unification of Private Law (UNIDROIT)

Professor (emeritus) of Geneva University and Graduate Institute of International Studies and Development; Senior Partner, Lalive attorneys; Member (former President), Institut de Droit International; Doctor honoris causa Universities of Lyon, Paris, Brussels, Rome, Balzan Prize for International Law (1990); Author of some 200 publications (on Public and Private International Law, Arbitration and Art Law).

 

Commander, Carabinieri, Unit for Protection of Cultural Heritage, Monza

Andrea Ilari was born in Rome on 01/08/1969.
He’s Commander of the Carabinieri Unit for Protection of Cultural Heritage in Monza since October 2003. He graduated in Law at the University "La Sapienza" of Rome (art. 2628 Civil Code. "Fraud on securities of companies: the corporate insider trading.") And in 2006 he obtained the qualification to the profession of lawyer.
In 2004 he attended the specific course and achieved specialization in Preservation of Cultural Heritage at the Ministry of Heritage and Culture and in 2006 a degree in "Science of Cultural and Environmental Heritage" at the University of Ferrara, Faculty of mathematical and physical sciences, with 110/110 cum laude.
In 2007 he attended the Advanced Training Course "Ecclesiastical cultural heritage. Management, communication and exploitation” at the Catholic University of Sacro Cuore di Milano.
In the same year 2007 he graduated Master of I° livello in "Cataloging of cultural heritage" at the Catholic University of Sacro Cuore di Milano.
In 2009 he obtained a Postgraduate Course "Eflit. English for Law and International Transactions” at the University of Milan-" Bicocca”, Department of Law of Economics - Faculty of Economics and Commerc.
He has participated in diplomatic missions carried out in Lebanon and Israel for training, and relations between police and has been tutor and lecturer of the course Unesco held in Vicenza in June 2009 and addressed to officials in the African sub-Saharanian and Eastern Africa.
He was a lecturer and speaker in more specialized training courses at numerous State and Private Italians universities.

 

Professor of Egyptology and Rector, University of Basel

Antonio Loprieno was born in Bari (Italy) in 1955. He attended secondary school at the European School in Brussels, where he obtained a Baccalauréat Européen in 1972. He then studied Egyptology, Linguistics, and Semitic Languages and Literatures at the University of Torino where he received his PhD and worked as an assistant. He was subsequently awarded a scholarship by the Alexander-von-Humboldt foundation and moved to the Georg-August University in Göttingen where he was awarded a German post-doctoral degree (Habilitation). Professor Loprieno taught at the University of Perugia from 1983 to 1986 and at the University of Göttingen from 1984 to 1987. He was appointed Extraordinary Professor of Hamito-semitic Languages at the University of Perugia in 1987, where he taught and undertook further research until 1989. He then served as Full Professor of Egyptology at the University of California, Los Angeles, from 1989 to 2000, where he was Head of the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures. During this period, he served as a guest professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes in Paris, and the University of Heidelberg. Professor Loprieno is a member of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, the German Institute of Archaeology, and various other national and international academic associations.
Professor Loprieno has been Full Professor of Egyptology at the University of Basel since the year 2000. His main research areas include Near Eastern languages and Egyptian cultural history and religion. Prior to his appointment as Rector of the University of Basel, he served as Dean of Studies of the University’s Faculty of Humanities, as President of the Planning Committee, and as President of the Library Committee. He heads the Conference of Swiss University Rectors (CRUS).

 

Co-Executive Director, Basel Institute on Governance

Anne Lugon-Moulin is an economist by background and holds an MA in Economic Development from the University of Nottingham. She has started her career with the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO) where she completed an extensive project on regulatory assessment reform applied to all federal authorization procedures for private enterprises in Switzerland.
She then joined the NGO Transparency International in 1999 to establish the Swiss Chapter of Transparency International. She managed a wide portfolio on anti-corruption projects in Switzerland and with various partners abroad. Eager to discover other sides of the world reality, she gained humanitarian field experience by working with the UN World Food Programme in Rwanda for two and a half years.
Thereafter she joined the Swiss Agency for Development Cooperation (SDC) in 2003. She worked as Deputy Head of the Governance Division until July 2008.
Her fields of expertise are systemic anti-corruption approaches, governance reforms in developing and transition countries, assets recovery linked to development assistance, and local public finances. She has published several articles on corruption and development and is the author of the SDC anti-corruption strategy.
Anne regularly speaks at international gatherings and conferences on governance, corruption and the role of development assistance in asset recovery.She is a member of the World Economic Forum Partnering Against Corruption Task Force.

 

Chief, Section of Museums and the International Conventions for the Protection of Cultural Objects, UNESCO

Christian Manhart is art historian and archaeologist (University of Munich and Sorbonne, Paris). He joined UNESCO's Cultural Sector in 1987 where he was in charge of projects for the conservation of historical monuments and sites, first in Africa and later in South and Central Asia. In 1997 he moved to the Executive Office of the Director General, where he conducted projects directly initiated by the Director General in the Mediterranean Region. From 2000 to 2005, he was in charge of 17 Member States in Central and South Asia at the Division of Cultural Heritage and worked extensively in Afghanistan. Within UNESCO’s mandate for the rehabilitation of Afghanistan’s cultural heritage, he was assigned Secretary of the International Coordination Committee for the Safeguarding of Afghanistan’s Cultural Heritage. In October 2005, he has been appointed to the UNESCO World Heritage Centre, as chief of section for publications, the web site, contacts with the media, partnerships, the Universities Network, World Heritage education and the Sustainable Tourism Program. Since April 2009, he is chief of the Section of museums and the international conventions for the protection of cultural objects (conventions of 1954, 1970, and 2001).
He has published many articles on conservation of sites in India, Bhutan and Afghanistan.

 

Art Crime Unit, Federal Police of Brussels, Belgium

Laurence Massy is an art historian and criminologist at the Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium. She teaches ‘Art crime’ to museum scholars at the Université de Liège. She is also a detective in the Art Crime Unit, Federal police of Brussels, Belgium. The views expressed in the conference are those of the author.

 

Attorney, Switzerland

Dr Peter Mosimann, attorney (WENGERPLATTNER, Basel Zurich Berne, partner) with specialization in Pharmaceutical Law, Intellectual Property Rights, Art Law and Entertainment Law; Counselor of the Swiss Association of Theatres (since 1980), Chairman of the Association of Copyright and Neighboring Right Users, Member of the Federal Arbitration Commission for the Exploitation of Copyright and Neighboring Rights, Lecturer on Swiss IP Law and Art Law at the Law Faculty of the University of Basel, Member of the Board of the Swiss Foundation for Photography, Member of the Board and Executive Committee of PRO HELVETIA, Chairman of the Basel Art Museum (Kunstmuseum Basel); many publications among others; co-editor and co-author of Kultur Kunst Recht, edited by Mosimann Peter/Renold Marc-André/ Raschèr Andrea F.G., Basel 2009 (1277 pages).

 

Board Member, Basel Institute on Governance

Anne Peters is Professor of Public International Law at the University of Basel, a position she has held since 2001. In the academic year 2004/05 she was Dean of the Faculty of Law. Prior to taking up the tenured post she was Assistant Professor at the Walther-Schücking-Institute of Public International Law at the Christian Albrechts University Kiel, where she obtained the Habilitation-qualification on the basis of her Habilitation-Thesis “Elemente einer Theorie der Verfassung Europas” (Elements of a Theory of the Constitution of Europe).
Born in Berlin in 1964, Anne Peters studied Law, Modern Greek and Spanish at the Universities of Würzburg, Lausanne, and Freiburg im Breisgau and pursued post-graduate studies at Harvard Law School.
She was a fellow of the National Scholarship Foundation of the German People (Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes) and was awarded the prize from the Scientific Society at Freiburg im Breisgau for her doctoral dissertation on territorial referendums in international law in 1995.
Her research activities cover the field of general public international law, especially its constitutionalization, European constitutional law, constitutional theory and constitutional comparison and national and international human rights. She has published extensively on questions of supranational global governance and global constitutionalism.
Since 2004, Anne Peters has been a member of the executive board of the European Society of International Law and since 2007 a member of the scientific advisory board of the European Journal of International Law. Since 2008, she is a member of the Swiss National Research Council.

 

Professor of Criminal Law, Basel University

Mark Pieth, Currently Professor of Criminal Law, Basel University; Chairman, Working Group on Bribery in International Business Transactions, OECD; Chairman of the Board, Basel Institute on Governance; Member: Swiss Federal Gaming Commission; Independent Inquiry Committee into the Iraq Oil-for-Food Programme. Author on economic and organized crime, money laundering, corruption, sentencing and criminal procedure. Formerly, Member, Financial Action Task Force and Head, Section of Economic and Organized Crime, Swiss Ministry of Justice and Police; Member, Chemical Action Task Force on Precursor Chemicals; Chairman, UN Intergovernmental Expert Group Commission to determine extent of illicit trafficking in drugs.

 

University of Melbourne

Kenneth Polk is Professor of Criminology at the University of Melbourne. Before that he was for many years Professor of Sociology at the University of Oregon. His undergraduate degree was from San Diego State, and his PhD from UCLA. Much of his research over the past decade has focused on violence and homicide, including the books When Men Kill (1994) and Child Victims of Homicide (2001, with Christine Alder). In addition, his most recent work has examined art crime, including the problem of the international traffic in plundered cultural heritage material.

 

Consultant, Raschèr Consulting, Zürich

Raschèr Consulting 2007 (Zurich): Cultural, political and legal advisor, coach or supervisor for governmental and non-governmental organizations on a national and international level:
Swiss Federal Office of Culture 1995 to 2006 (Berne): Head Legal and International Affairs.
Teaching Appointments (since 1997):
Lecturer for Cultural Law (with focus on Heritage Law and Cultural Policy) at the Universities of Basel, Berne, Lucerne and Zurich.
Publications (since 1996):
Books:  Culture Art Law, Basel 2009, Basel – in German
Cultural Property Transfer, Zurich and Brussels 2005 – in English, German, French
Cultural Transfer and Globalization, Zurich and Baden-Baden 2000 – in German
Various articles on Cultural Heritage Law (transfer of cultural goods, UNESCO-Convention 1970, Unidroit-Convention 1995, Nazi-looted art) – for details see
www.rascherconsulting.com

 

Director, Centre du droit de l’art, Geneva

Marc-André Renold, Dr iur, LL.M., studied at the Universities of Geneva and Basel in Switzerland and at Yale University in the USA. He is Associate Professor in art and cultural property law at the University of Geneva. He is a Director of the Art-Law Centre at the University of Geneva Law School.
He is also Attorney-at-law, Member of the Geneva Bar; his areas of practice are among others art and cultural heritage law, intellectual property and public and private international law.
Marc-André Renold has been Visiting Professor at the Faculté Jean Monnet of the University of Paris Sud (2006-2007) and at the University of Lausanne (2008-2009). He has also taught at the University Jean Moulin in Lyon, at the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva, as well as for the Duke-Geneva Institute in Transnational Law. In the spring of 2008 he lectured at the Hague Academy of International Law.
He is the author or co-author of several publications in the field of international and comparative art and cultural heritage law and has been, since its inception, an editor of the ‘Studies in Art Law’ series (19 volumes published to date). He is the co-editor and co-author of ‘Kultur Kunst Recht : Schweizerisches und internationales Recht’ [Culture, Art and Law: Swiss and International Law] (2009), the leading Swiss handbook on the law of art and culture.
Marc-André Renold is married and the father of three children.

 

Lecturer, University of Basel

Beat Schönenberger (1969) graduated from the University of Basel, Faculty of Law, in 1994; between 1995 and 1997 he worked as a research and teaching assistant for Professor Ingeborg Schwenzer (Basel University); in 1997 he was a visiting scholar to Boalt Hall School of Law, UC Berkeley (USA) before receiving his PhD summa cum laude from Basel University one year later. Between 1999 and 2003 he served as a clerk at the Basel Civil Court (Zivilgericht Basel-Stadt) and was admitted to the Bar of Basel-Stadt in 2001. Since 2002 he has been Lecturer in Private Law at the Universities of Basel and St. Gallen, Switzerland. In 2009 the Faculty of Law at the University of Basel awarded him the venia legendi for Private Law, Art Law and Comparative Law based on his comparative study ‘The Restitution of Cultural Assets’, which was published in German by Stämpfli Publishers Berne in spring 2009; the English edition will be published in September 2009 by the same publisher in cooperation with Eleven International Publishing (Utrecht, the Netherlands). Beat Schönenberger is a member of the Committee of Cultural Heritage Law of the International Law Association.

 

Director, Musée National du Mali

Dr Samuel Sidibé is the Director of the National Museum of Mali since 1987.
From 1971 to 1980 he studied in France. He has Master's Degree in Art History and Archaeology and a PhD in History of African Societies. From 1994 to 1996, as associate curator of the Niger Valley exhibition, he managed the itinerancy of this exhibition which was presented in Mali, Burkina Faso, Nigeria, Mauritania, Guinea and Niger.
Samuel Sidibé collaborated with ICOM and UNESCO in a crusade against the looting of archaeological sites and illegal trafficking of the Malian cultural heritage. He contributed to raise awareness both at the national and international levels about the necessity to protect cultural heritage. He has been one of the founding members of AFRICOM and is also a Board member of this organisation.
From 2001 to 2003, he conducted the rehabilitation and expansion of Mali’s National Museum. This museum is today a major museum of the continent with appropriate exhibition halls, also dedicating itself to contemporary art. Samuel Sidibé produced in 2007 with African curators an important regional exhibition of contemporary art (Contact Zone) that brought together artists coming from North Africa and south of the Sahara.
Mr. Sidibé is the Director of the 8th “Rencontres Africaines de la Photographie”. He received the Prince Claus Prize in 2006, and is also "Officier dans l'ordre des Arts et Lettres" (France).

 

Max-Planck-Institute for Comparative and International Private Law, Hamburg

Born on 28 July 1935 in Tilsit, East Prussia, Germany. Primary and secondary school in Tilsit, Hohenems (Austria), Hamburg-Harburg, Buxtehude. Law study in Hamburg (Germany) and Ann Arbor (Michigan, USA). First and second bar examination in Hamburg. 1963 Master of Comparative Law at the University of Michigan Law School, Ann Arbor, Michigan. 1970 Dr iur at the University of Hamburg. Research assistant and research associate at the Hamburg Max-Planck-Institute of Comparative and International Private Law from 1963-1991. 1980 PhD at the University of Zürich Faculty of Law (Switzerland). Lecturer, associate and full professor of private law, private international law and comparative law at the University of Zürich Faculty of Law from 1981-2002. Retirement in 2002. Since then free research associate at the Hamburg Max-Planck-Institute of Comparative and International Private Law.
Member of several national and international associations: e.g. Swiss Society of International Law; German Society of International Law; German Council of Private International Law; International Law Association; International Cultural Property Society; Groupe européen de droit international privé; German Society of Comparative Law; bilateral law associations with Israel, Italy, Turkey and the USA.

 

President, Ethics Commission, ICOM Switzerland

France Terrier is currently director-curator of the Museum of Yverdon and its region, a museum of archaeology and history where she has worked since 1992. She obtained an M.A. in archaeology, art history and history at the University of Lausanne and went on to complete a certificate in cultural resource management at the Universities of Lausanne and Geneva. Between 2002 and 2007, she joined the staff of the periodical ‘as’ (Archéologie Suisse /Archäologie Schweiz) as editor of French texts. Between 1998 and 2002 she was the Swiss president of the association of museum directors of the Jura region. She held the position of vice-president of ICOM-Switzerland from 2003 to 2008 and has since then presided over the ethics commission of this organisation.

 

Attorney, ZSCHUNKE Avocats/Rechtsanwälte Berlin-Paris

Studies of law at the Humboldt-University of Berlin and the University of Saarland, Germany;
Studies of political sciences at the Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris, France, assistant at French Parliament Assemblée Nationale, Practical training in law offices in St.Petersburg (Russia), Lima (Perú);
Practice in protection and restitution of cultural objects at Senate Administration for Science, Research and Culture, Berlin, Department for the Protection/Repatriation of Cultural Assets, International Institute for the Unification of Private Law (Unidroit) in Rome, Italy; since 2000 as lawyer (Art law, commercial law, unfair competition law, IP-law; tenancy law);
Publications in Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Diplomatisches Magazin, Osteuropa, handbook „Kultur und Recht“.
President of the association “Epopée de l’Europe”.

 

Director, Basel Institute on Governance

Daniel Thelesklaf, a lawyer by profession, is the former Director of the Swiss Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU). He joined the Federal Office for Police in 1998 to become the first Director of the Swiss FIU after a career in the private sector at Swiss Life and Dresdner Bank. Since 2000, he is member of the Board of Transparency International Switzerland. In 2002/2003, he was Head of the Due Diligence Unit (AML regulator) in Liechtenstein. He is now engaged in various anti-money laundering, anti-terrorist financing and anti-corruption projects and technical assistance missions for the OECD, UN, Council of Europe, OSCE and IMF. In 2008, he became Co-Director of the Basel Institute on Governance.

 

Head, Intern. Transfer of Cultural Property, Swiss Federal Office of Culture

Benno Widmer graduated in Law in 1996 after studies at the Universities of Basel and Geneva. He took the Basel Bar Exam in 1998. For the following years he practiced as an attorney-at-law in a commercial law firm. In parallel Benno Widmer studied history of art, philosophy and medieval history at the Basel University and graduated as a Master of Arts at the London based Courtauld Institute of Art (UCL).
In 2005 Benno Widmer joined the Federal Office of Culture. In 2008 he was appointed Head of the Specialised Body for the International Transfer of Cultural Property and the Bureau for looted art of the Federal Office of Culture. As the federal center of competence, the Specialized Body is the point of contact for the public and authorities. It represents Switzerland vis-à-vis foreign authorities on issues of the transfer of Cultural Property. The Specialized Body coordinates the work of the federal authorities and assumes an advisory role as well in cooperation with cantonal authorities and parties of interest.
Benno Widmer is a member of the INTERPOL-Expert Group on Art Crime and the International Council of Museums (ICOM). He acts as the expert of the Federal Office of Culture at UNESCO and UNODC for questions related to the illegal transfer of Cultural Property and looted art.