FIFTH CONFERENCE OF THE GENERAL SECRETARIAT OF INTERPOL-LYON

Between 18.09 and 20.09.2007 in Krakow , Poland , the General Secretariat of INTERPOL-Lyon had organized the Fifth Conference on the topic Illicit Trade with Cultural Properties, stolen in Central and Eastern Europe . Host of the Conference, at which partook 24 countries, was the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Poland. Among the participating countries was also a Macedonian delegation comprised of representatives of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Head of the Section for Prevention within the Cultural Heritage Protection Office, Mr. Ilcho Bojchevski. The goal of this meeting was the promotion of the cooperation among the inherent institutions included in the process of prevention of the illicit trade with cultural goods. Conceiving the seriousness of the problem with the illicit trade with cultural goods and having in mind the experiences of the participating countries for promotion of the cooperation in the prevention of this type of crime, at the Conference were adopted recommendations that would contribute to the further more efficient work in the domain of detecting of these criminal acts.

The Fifth Conference of the General Secretariat of INTERPOL-Lyon recommends to the member countries:

1. To adopt national legislation for protection of the cultural goods and resources for fight against acts related to cultural goods according to the needs identified in each country.
2. To provide UNESCO with the national legislation for cultural heritage and their regular changes in order to be included in the legislation database of UNESCO.
3. To ratify the UNESCO Convention of 1970 and the UNDROIT Convention of 1995 if they had not done that yet.
4. To establish close and continuous cooperation at national level among all the bodies, agencies and institutions in charge for protection of the cultural goods.
5. To improve the protection of the museum, the public collections, the worship locations and the archaeological sites.
6. To promote establishing of inventories, including photographs, using internationally recognized standards of descriptions as is the Identification number of the object and to encourage ICOM and UNESCO to provide training for identification numbers in their countries.
7. To regularly check the offers at the arts markets and the sales of artistic goods via the Internet and to encourage the implementation of the Basic measures related to the cultural object offered for sale on the Internet.
8. To deliver relevant information for the thefts of cultural properties, stolen and found objects, and details about the criminals and networks involved in the illicit trade, to the General Secretariat of INTERPOL for entrance of data and crime analysis.
9. To use the database for art works of INTERPOL-eASF for remote search and to expand the connection with that database besides NCB towards all the agencies for law enforcement that investigate criminal acts related with cultural goods.
10. To establish joint investigation teams for crime with cultural properties through bilateral and multilateral agreements according to the framework decision of the Council of 13 th of June 2002 for joint investigation teams.
11. To encourage the inherent institutions in charge for postal services to enhance the checks of the packages that could contain illicit cultural goods.