Niger suspended the export of precious stones and meteorites after selling a valuable find at auction

The President of Niger General Abdouramane Tiani banned some minerals and meteorites on the weekend of exports in connection with the investigation into smuggling and sales at auction in the United States of Martian stone found in Niger – the National Press Agency Anp said.

Niger believes that the Meteorite found in the Agadezu region, weighing 24.5 kg, is the largest Martian rock that has ever been found on earth and as a valuable from a scientific point of view the object should remain in the country.

However, in mid -July, the meteorite in unexplained circumstances went to New York, where at the Sotheby's auction he was sold for almost $ 5 million. The auction house did not reveal the name of either the buyer or the seller, but rejected the allegations that the auctioned exhibit was smuggled. The auction catalog only states that the stone was found on November 16, 2023 by a “meteorite hunter in the distant Agadez region in Niger”.

Slightly more information appeared in an article published last year in the journal of the University of Florence, which shows that the meteorite, marked as NWA 16788, was found in Sahara, 90 km west of the Chirf Oasis and was “sold by the local community of the international trader”, reaching his private gallery in Italian Arezzo.

The day after the sale of the finding of the Museum of the Living Desert in Agadez, he demanded from the Italian authorities and the Meteorite return gallery, and the Niger government initiated an investigation to explain in what circumstances the object, which should be the property of the state, left its borders.

These claims were supported by prof. Paul Serano, a paleontologist from the University of Chicago, explaining in an interview with the BBC that, according to international law, you can simply simply derive something from the country that is important for its cultural heritage – regardless of whether it is a cultural object, a physical object, a natural object or extraterrestrial object. “We left the colonial era when such things were fine,” he explained.

Niger, although one of the poorest countries in the world, has rich mineral resources, including coal, gold, silver, tin and uranium, of which it is the fourth largest producer in the world, and in the Sahara, which covers a significant part of the country, there is often to discover meteorites. (PAP)

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