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• v  take illegally; of intellectual property
• v  steal goods; take as spoils
  During the earthquake people looted the stores that were deserted by their owners
• s  wrongfully emptied or stripped of anything of value
  the robbers left the looted train

• This should make the next month interesting: a bronze horse head looted from Beijings Summer Palace (Yuanmingyuan) by British and French troops in 1860 will be sold at a Sotheby .
• That quite possibly includes the people who looted his lavish three-story riverside home down to its marble walls.
• Coalition troops looted and vandalized the Iraqi airport that now must be rebuilt: Following Familiar Footsteps Bush is starting to look a lot like Clinton.

• loot
• plunder
• despoil
• reave
• strip
• rifle
• ransack
• pillage
• foray
• pillaged
• plundered
• ransacked

News & Articles

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• Antiquities, With a Proven Record, Drive Auction Market
  Because of fears of buying looted art, important works that have a proven past shoot to high levels at auction, while other works fail to sell.
  June 14, 2013 - New York Times
• Former NY Sen. Pedro Espada Gets 5 Years In Prison
  The once-influential politician was convicted previously in a separate case alleging he looted more than $500,000 from taxpayer-subsidized health clinics in the Bronx.
  June 14, 2013 - CBS New York
• Cambodia to welcome looted statues' return from US
  PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP) — Two 10th-century Cambodian stone statues displayed for nearly two decades at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art were being returned to their homeland Tuesday in a high-profile case of allegedly looted artifacts.
  June 11, 2013 - Associated Press via Yahoo! News

Quotes

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• Ban Ki-moon in Inquirer.net
  The initiative will foster much needed cooperation between developed and developing countries and between the public and private sectors to ensure that looted assets are returned to their rightful owners,said UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.
• Francesco Rutelli in Forbes
  I want to reiterate that our goal is to obtain full return of the objects that have been looted and to cooperate with the Getty,Rutelli told reporters.
• Mari Alkatiri in International Herald Tribune
  They destroyed Dili town, burned, looted and killed our people, and then they accuse me of being a terrorist, communist and a killer,Alkatiri said in his first public comments since stepping down.