Owners of Hobby Lobby facing federal investigation concerning their personal

The founders of Hobby Lobby – arts and crafts, but for Jesus – have reportedly been the subject of a years-long federal investigation over suspicions that they have been illegally importing cultural artifacts from Iraq for a museum the family was set to open in Washington in 2017.

The billionaire owners of Hobby Lobby are being investigated for the possibly smuggling of hundreds of ancient Middle Eastern biblical artifacts.

The probe is based on a 2011 shipment of 200-300 small clay tablets inscribed in cuneiform.

The museum president claimed no wrongdoing telling the Daily Beast only: “There was a shipment and it had improper paperwork-that was attached to it”.

Hobby Lobby CEO Steve Green seems pretty unconcerned.

Summers downplayed the investigation as a result of “incomplete paperwork” in an interview with The Daily Beast.

“Is it possible that we have a few illicit [artifacts]?”

It’s not known how the Greens acquired the items, which the Daily Beast says might have been looted.

Hobby Lobby’s allegedly stolen tablets make up a collection that the Greens have been amassing for the Museum of the Bible.

Cary Summers, president of the Museum of the Bible, located in Washington, D.C. and scheduled to open its doors in 2017, confirmed to The Daily Beast “both the seizure of the cuneiform tablets and the subsequent federal investigation”.

In August, the museum signed a seven-year agreement with the Israel Antiquities Authority, which would allow it to borrow from Israel’s state-owned collection of more than two million objects.

The Greens have been the primary financial backers of the project, which the New York Times estimated cost around $800m.

The Green family and Hobby Lobby took the national stage previous year when they successfully argued that they should be exempt from providing their employees with insurance coverage of contraceptives because of their religious beliefs. the Supreme Court ruled that for-profit businesses could assert a religious objection to the Obama administration’s health care regulations. “The Museum of the Bible is a separate not-for-profit entity made possible, in part, by the generous charitable contributions of the Green family”.