Socialite and buisnesswoman, Kim Kardashian, realised she had been caught up in a global art smuggling row on Tuesday when a roman sculpture that was imported to California had her name under it.

When the statue hit Los Angeles airport in 2016 it was seized after an Italian archaeologist, who had seen the piece, said it had been “looted, smuggled and illegally exported.”

It was said to be like half of a bigger 5.5-ton (5 000 kg) cargo value $745 000 (about R10 million), on suspicion it might be “protected cultural property from Italy” in violation of a regulation requiring correct documentation for importing uncommon archaeological gadgets.

The Italian archaeologist who studied the statue revealed that it was “of classical Peplophoros style… which represents a copy of an original Greek sculpture.”

However, US prosecutors last week called for the statue fragment.

The court paperwork had mentioned that the beneficiary and dealer title was listed as “‘Kim Kardashian dba Noel Roberts Trust’ in Woodland Hills, California” and referred to a bill “for the sale of the defendant statue by Vervoordt to Noel Robert Trust, dated March 11, 2016.”

According to reports, Noel Roberts Trust is an entity linked to actual property purchases and gross sales made by Kardashian and her estranged husband Kanye West in the United States.