Cemetery bronze is being remelted in Eastern Europe

In recent weeks, cemeteries across Luxembourg have been the target of a series of acts of vandalism and theft. The most serious incident took place a week ago at the cemetery in Bettembourg, where 67 graves were damaged; similar offences have also been reported in the Hollerich district. The perpetrators’ main targets were bronze crosses and sculptures. It was initially assumed that the motive for the crimes was simply to sell the metal for scrap, but industry experts categorically refute this theory.

According to Mike Decker, an antiques dealer with forty years’ experience, the base value of the raw material is too low to justify such criminal risks. A century-old bronze figurine weighing around half a kilogram would fetch only between 9 and 9.50 euros per kilogram if sold as copper scrap. At the same time, it is impossible to sell such items on the legal antiques market. Professional dealers or sellers at flea markets immediately recognise that the items originate from cemeteries and refuse to deal with them. Decker emphasises that, in four decades of practice, he has never once encountered any attempts to sell such items through official channels.

The true value of the stolen items lies in the high quality of the antique bronze used as the raw material. The expert believes that organised crime groups are smuggling the metal out of Luxembourg to Eastern Europe. There, in specialised underground foundries, this raw material is used to produce high-quality replicas of sought-after works of art. Legitimate businesses refuse to cast such replicas, as this is classified as fraud, making the black market the only production base for counterfeiters.

It is precisely at the stage of selling the forgeries that the main profit margin of the criminal scheme is generated: the value of the fake sculptures can reach 150,000 euros or more. The chemical composition of bronze has remained virtually unchanged for millennia, enabling fraudsters to imitate both modern and antique works with a high degree of accuracy. As a result, the quality of such copies is constantly improving, and it is becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish them from the originals. Nevertheless, the forgeries retain one physical flaw: upon expert examination, the copies are usually found to be approximately 3 per cent smaller than the originals due to the technical characteristics of metal shrinkage during the secondary casting process.