A British TV art expert who sold works to a suspected Hezbollah financier is sentenced to prison

LONDON (AP) — An art expert who appeared on the BBC’s Bargain Hunt show was sentenced Friday to two and a half years in prison for failing to report his sale of pricey works to a suspected financier of Lebanon’s militant Hezbollah group.

At a previous hearing, Oghenochuko Ojiri, 53, had pleaded guilty to eight offenses under the Terrorism Act 2000. The art sales for about 140,000 pounds ($185,000) to Nazem Ahmad, a diamond and art dealer sanctioned by the U.K. and U.S. as a Hezbollah financier, took place between October 2020 and December 2021. The sanctions were designed to prevent anyone in the U.K. or U.S. from trading with Ahmad or his businesses.

Ojiri, who also appeared on the BBC’s Antiques Road Trip, faced a possible sentence of five years in prison in the hearing at London’s Central Criminal Court, which is better known as the Old Bailey.

In addition to the prison term, Justice Bobbie Cheema-Grubb said Ojiri faces an additional year on license — a period of time after a prison sentence ends when an offender must stay out of trouble or risk going back to prison.

She told Ojiri he had been involved in a commercial relationship “for prestige and profit” and that until his involvement with Ahmad, he was “someone to be admired.”

“You knew about Ahmad’s suspected involvement in financing terrorism and the way the art market can be exploited by someone like him,” she said. “This is the nadir — there is one direction your life can go and I am confident that you will not be in front of the courts again.”

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The Met’s investigation into Ojiri was carried out alongside Homeland Security in the U.S., which is conducting a wider investigation into alleged money laundering by Ahmad using shell companies.

“This prosecution, using specific Terrorism Act legislation, is the first of its kind and should act as a warning to all art dealers that we can, and will, pursue those who knowingly do business with people identified as funders of terrorist groups,” said Commander Dominic Murphy, head of the Metropolitan Police’s Counter Terrorism Command.

Ahmad was sanctioned in 2019 by the U.S. Treasury, which said he was a prominent Lebanon-based money launderer involved in smuggling blood diamonds, which are mined in conflict zones and sold to finance violence.

Two years ago, the U.K. Treasury froze Ahmad’s assets because he financed Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Shiite militant organization that has been designated an international terrorist group.

Following Ojiri’s arrest in April 2023, the Met obtained a warrant to seize a number of artworks, including a Picasso and Andy Warhol paintings, belonging to Ahmad and held in two warehouses in the U.K. The collection, valued at almost 1 million pounds, is due to be sold with the funds to be reinvested back into the police, the Crown Prosecution Service and the Home Office.