Customs, Excise and VAT fraud reporting
If you have any suspicions about an object and you believe a criminal offence has been committed, you should report it to the Customs Hotline.
Any individual working with cultural heritage in public or commercial organisations has an ethical and legal duty to buy and sell cultural property honestly. In cultural heritage organisations, acquisition will be through purchase, donation or bequest and in commercial organisations acquisition will be through purchase. In either case organisations must be confident that the objects they are acquiring have a good provenance, are owned by the person offering the object, and are not being offered as a result of illicit trade.
If you have any suspicions about an object and you believe a criminal offence has been committed, you should report it to the Customs Hotline.
This checklist will help you follow up lines of enquiry to establish the ownership and history of the object you are acquiring. It is a useful checklist for both cultural heritage and commercial organisations.