Context :
Created in 1975, the OCBC is the investigative service of the Direction Centrale de la Police Judiciaire (DCPJ), with national jurisdiction. It is composed of police officers and gendarmes.
Need :
Illegal trafficking in cultural property remains one of the most important global trafficking activities in terms of profits generated. France and Italy, with their extremely rich heritage, are the two European countries that are the main victims of cultural property theft. Private residences are the main targets of criminals, particularly castles and bourgeois houses, but also churches and sometimes small museums, which are less closely watched.
Fully committed to the fight against organised crime, France created the OCBC – Office Central de Lutte contre le trafic de Biens Culturels – in 1975. This governmental entity, which is attached to the judicial police, deals with complex investigations into theft and handling of cultural property, but also cases of forgery, organised fraud and money laundering on a national and international scale. The OCBC is particularly active in the fight against the looting and trafficking of archaeological property from conflict zones.
As part of these actions, the OCBC created the TREIMA database in 1995 – Thesaurus de recherche électronique et d’imagerie en matière artistique. This database of images of works is regularly updated with photographs of cultural property stolen in France and abroad when a disappearance is reported. This database currently contains more than 100,000 images.
Objectives :
- Accelerate their investigation work
- Significant gain in work efficiency
Solution :
- Provide our Visual Search technology that is easily integrated into the OCBC technology environment
- Ensure a scalable image recognition technology with a very fast response time
- Give access to our technology on a licensed basis. This allows for local integration and ensures full confidentiality of the OCBC data (the LTU team has no visibility on the queries made)
