i am not defending this guy or people who traffic, collect or profit from this business .
But, what would of happened to these artifacts had someone not removed them?
Does anyone know what the Khmer Rouge did to temples and relics? I was thinking there was information about the National Museum in PP.
For example, the taliban wiped out Buddhist temples and blew up the reclining Buddha carved in the mountain.
Recently, ISIS destroyed Christian churches that were some of the oldest in the world.
I spent a great day at The British Museum in London in 2004 and did wonder about the displays..I was there for an Asian exhibit upstairs on LOAN...it was incredible.
I was happy to see the Japanese lady return her husband's collection of Khmer relics when he died.
I can only imagine what amazing works are in private collections or stashed in basements of museums around the world.

Latchford - AAA grade rolled-gold thief, fence and fraudster.
Raped, pillaged and ponced Cambodia's cultural heritage for half a hundred years.
Grand in scale, monstrous by nature.

But almost impossible to get Cambodian cultural people to say a bad word about him.
headscratch

He once donated half a mill's worth of stuff he had pinched, back to Cambodia - but surely that does not excuse his crimes.
??

Interesting case. In the bad old days you could visit certain dealers in Bangkok who could show you hundreds of pictures of statues and reliefs in situ. If you wanted one they could get them hacked out and brought across to Thailand (with the complicity of whatever faction ran that area). It's hard to fathom the amount of damage that was done to the country's heritage during this time. Temples like Koh Ker have almost no statuary or fine carvings left. Other lesser temples just disappeared, pillaged, dynamited and torn to bits. A terrible waste.

The art world has always been permeated with criminals, even of the upper class. Catching one or two isn't going to change anything.

Just a tiny but revealing snapshot of Latchford,s life - 2008
(PS, he was one of the biggest of the thai based "steal to order" operations that JB refers to above, for decades)

Gold of the gods: for over 50 years Douglas Latchford has pursued his passion for Asian sculpture. He talks to Louise Nicholson in his London apartment about his extraordinary collection and its future

'Hullo, please take your shoes off,' is Douglas Latchford's greeting. I add them to the tidy row beside the front door and step forward in socks into one of the most remarkable rooms in London. To visit Mr Latchford during his infrequent trips to London is to step out of 18th-century Mayfair into a serene beauty that evokes the ruined Khmer temples of Thailand and Cambodia, the area that has been his primary home for more than 50 years.

Semi-shuttered windows, potted ficus trees, and opera arias playing quietly from an unknown source set the tone for his collection of full-sized Khmer stone deities placed against the wails, some drenched in gold jewellery. Other treasures--an Indian Chola bronze of Rama, a Chinese horse, pre-Khmer bronze bells of the 2nd century, a pre-Angkor linga andyoni, a 12th-century finial for a palanquin--stand on the floor, tables and pedestals in the L-shaped room (Fig. 5). The lighting is soft, the star statues accentuated with ceiling spotlights.

Mr Latchford, tall and majestic with crew-cut white hair and wearing a black Thai silk jacket and three gold wrist bangles, watches me absorb the scene. Then he speaks. 'All Khmer sculpture when it was in situ would have been lit from above, so you see the shadow under the nose and the mouth and down over the pectoral muscles.' He watches again, then sums up the room. 'The collection is not overwhelming in size but the museum in Phnom Penh agrees that the pieces are the best of their type.' He is returning to Thailand for five months the next day, leaving his statues behind. 'I miss them madly. The problem is that my work is there.' And the work funds the art.

Born in London, Mr Latchford first went to Asia in 1951, to work in shipping. Shortly afterwards he founded a pharmaceutical manufacturing and distribution company in Bangkok, which he still runs, while also building condominiums. It was at a dinner party in Bangkok in 1955 given by Francois Duhau de Berenx (who would later advise Doris Duke on her Asian art acquisitions) that he first encountered 'what was to become the passion of my life. I saw a piece on the floor. Greek and Roman sculpture is wonderful but I responded to this on another level. Indian statuary is wonderful, too, but this was more refined, simple, pure. In Khmer art the form of both the male and female bodies are just great. Francois saw my reaction and said "there's another one at the shop where I bought this". I went and bought it. I paid, I remember exactly,...

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newkidontheblock wrote: ↑Thu Dec 05, 2019 11:07 pm Obviously theft wasn’t done without the blind eye or possibly the active help of the government. Will the Cambodian extra ordinary courts step in to find an try these officials responsible for such crimes against humanity?

As I tried to say in my previous post, it was of course done in collusion with whatever group controlled that area. They were not always working with the government besides paying lip service. Crimes against humanity generally means against living people rather than statues.

Did they sell any artifacts out of Pie trucks?

j57 wrote: ↑Thu Dec 05, 2019 7:33 pm
But, what would of happened to these artifacts had someone not removed them?
Does anyone know what the Khmer Rouge did to temples and relics?

They damaged many pagodas and churches but they generally preserved Angkorean ruins. All factions were involved in looting statuary though.

GMJS-CEO wrote: ↑Fri Dec 06, 2019 2:27 am Did they sell any artifacts out of Pie trucks?

'still do