One could argue both ways. As I recall, he knocked over some third-world (or, since it's magical, negative-third-world) country to loot the artifact from a tinpot dictator. On the one hand, that sounds pretty dang public on the face of it; on the other, he phrases it as 'somewhere he doesn't have to worry about silly rules' (such as "don't hunt down and kill people because you want their things"), implying Britain isn't paying a lot of attention to the place in any event.