KABUL: Around 10 packages were shipped to the firm, five intercepted by customs which had shipping labels falsely declaring that the artifacts came from Turkey.
“We should have exercised more oversight and carefully questioned how the acquisitions were handled”, Hobby Lobby President Steve Green said Wednesday. The family that owns the company is also bankrolling a $500 million Museum of the Bible slated to open in Washington in the fall.
“The Company. did not fully appreciate the complexities of the acquisitions process”. The result, insisted the company, were “some regrettable mistakes”. “Hobby Lobby has cooperated with the government throughout its investigation, and with the announcement of today’s settlement agreement, is pleased the matter has been resolved”.
The Justice Department announced a settlement with the Oklahoma-based store chain on Wednesday, which says Hobby Lobby began bringing the items into the country, from Iraq, almost a decade ago. Visit an antique shop in the UAE’s Abu Dhabi, Dubai or Sharjah, and there is a good chance that numerous items for sale are from Afghanistan. Hobby Lobby said that company officials didn’t understand the rules for properly bringing antiquities into the country.
It is unknown if any of the packages were delivered to the Santa Clarita Hobby Lobby, but a manager at the store said the location was purely retail based, and had no knowledge of any corporate packages moving through the store. Once they are sold on the black market, and most likely sold again and again, the likelihood is high that they will never return to their provenance.
Hobby Lobby store in Stow, Ohio. In that case, the U.S. Supreme Court decided that closely held corporations can exclude certain medical services such as contraception from their medical plans if they have a religious objection.
The United States Justice Department has found a USA crafting giant company guilty of buying Mesopotamian artifacts it had illegally imported from a United Arab Emirates-based supplier.
Green and a consultant traveled to the United Arab Emirates in July 2010 to inspect the artifacts for sale, the DOJ said.
The forfeiture will include some 5,500 artifacts purchased by Hobby Lobby Inc that originated from the region of modern-day Iraq and were shipped under false labels, as well as an additional $3 million to settle the civil charges, the Department of Justice said in a statement. The company didn’t pay the dealer who supposedly owned the items, instead wiring $1.6 million in payment to the accounts of seven other individuals.
