Law, crime and regulation

A sculpture of Queen Victoria by Alfred Gilbert has been temporarily barred from leaving the country while the government searches for a buyer based in the UK to pay the £1.2m asking price.

Richard Ellis, a former Metropolitan Police officer, used the platform of The Art Business Conference to call for the restatement of the art and antiques crime unit today.

Culture Minister John Glen has placed a temporary export bar on a Scottish two-part seal matrix linked with Robert the Bruce.

A 6ft high peacock sculpture by artist Geoffrey Dashwood has been stolen from a garden in the New Forest.

A man from Sunderland who forged the work of local artist Norman Cornish (1919-2014) has been ordered to repay £1.

A $160m (£136m) masterpiece by Dutch-American abstract-impressionist painter Willem de Kooning (1904-1997) that had been stolen from a US museum 30 years ago has been discovered in an antiques shop.

Mayfair art agent Timothy Sammons is facing a fresh legal battle over the sale of paintings and could face extradition to the US.

The theft of a 19th century postbox in Asthall Leigh in west Oxfordshire earlier this year has led local councillors to fear criminals are targeting specific postboxes to sell on for hundreds of pounds.

Five antiquities dealers were arrested by Israeli police in Jerusalem last week in connection with items that were illegally imported into the US by the arts-and-crafts retailer Hobby Lobby.

An antiques and art dealer is asking the trade to be aware of a scam after a painting was fraudulently purchased from the gallery in Wiltshire.

A first edition of AA Milne’s 'Now we are Six' that disappeared nearly a year ago has been returned to its dealers.