With a searing ancient Near East focus, Hicham Aboutaam, the 30ish Lebanese antiquities dealer sweeps into the back of his Phoenix gallery showroom in Manhattan to greet me. He is dressed in French elegance, his handshake somewhat reserved. I later notice the smooth, manicured, almost translucent quality of his fingers -- certainly absent any trace of anything freshly dug up.

I've come unannounced to view Phoenix Ancient Art's controversial Greek & Roman exhibition of vases from the 6th century BC-4th century BC. The promo said most of them were acquired by a Swiss collector -- a Dr. C.J.D. -- "during the course of his archaeological studies in the 1960s and early 1970s".

Aboutaam tells me right off that C.J.D. are not the real initials of the previous owner. But the individual, still alive, insisted on anonymity in exhibtion and sale of the collection as a precondition to the sale to Hicham and his brother, Ali.

Beginning to sound like the Dorak Affair? (See… Scoop: Suzan Mazur: The Dorak Affair's Final Chapter)

Brother Ali runs the Geneva branch of Phoenix Ancient Art, where raids were carried out in March 2001 by Swiss and Italian authorities, and antiquities seized.

The Italian government has issues with the brothers because of their business dealings with Giacomo Medici, who's appealing a 10-year sentence in Rome for antiquities trafficking.

The Aboutaams have also been under the scope because of Hicham's 2004 guilty plea to a misdemeanor federal charge of falsifying import documentation related to a silver drinking vessel from Iran that Phoenix sold for $950,000 (some experts say it's a fake). Ali Aboutaam was convicted that same year in Egypt and sentenced in absentia to 15 years for smuggling.