House Dem hits smugglers for helping Hobby Lobby move stolen artifacts into US

Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas) ripped the smugglers who helped Hobby Lobby purchase a trove of ancient artifacts taken illegally from Iraq. 

“The [United Arab Emirates] and Israeli ‘dealers’ who helped Hobby Lobby smuggle stolen artifacts into U.S. should be banned from doing business [with] US for 10 [years],” Castro wrote on Twitter. 

The UAE and Israeli “dealers” who helped Hobby Lobby smuggle stolen artifacts into US should be banned from doing business w US for 10 yrs.

— Joaquin Castro (@JoaquinCastrotx) July 5, 2017

The Justice Department announced on Wednesday that the arts-and-crafts company had agreed to forfeit more than 5,500 artifacts that it had bought for $1.6 million, and would pay an additional $3 million fine. 

{mosads}The Justice Department alleged that the acquisition was “fraught with red flags” that had been ignored by Hobby Lobby, including where the items had been stored prior to inspection in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). What’s more, the Justice Department said, the company did not communicate with or pay the dealer who reportedly owned the artifacts.

The artifacts were also falsely or misleadingly labeled when they arrived in the U.S. from dealers in Israel and the UAE, the Justice Department said.

Hobby Lobby has since agreed to “remedy the deficiencies that resulted in its unlawful importation of the Artifacts.”

“We should have exercised more oversight and carefully questioned how the acquisitions were handled,” Hobby Lobby President Steve Green said in a statement.