'Adventurer scholar' Douglas Latchford dies in Bangkok, aged 89
Expert in Khmer and Indian antiquities was a leading dealer in Cambodian art in the 1970s, but last year was accused of allegedly creating false provenances for antiquities
Vincent Noce
10th August 2020 19:42 BST

Douglas A. J. Latchford, who was once honored by the Cambodian government for donating Khmer Empire antiquities to the national museum and was charged last year with trafficking in looted relics, has died. Tang Chhin Sothy/Agence France-Presse via Getty Images

Douglas Latchford, a leading expert and dealer in Khmer and Indian antiquities, has died in Bangkok at the age of 89.

His family confirmed to The Art Newspaper today that Latchford, a well-known figure in the fields of South East Asian art and antiquities, died on 2 August. A private funeral has already taken place.

A self-described "adventurer scholar", Douglas Latchford was born in Bombay (now present day Mumbai) to British parents. He settled in Thailand in 1951, where he became successful in the pharmaceutical and property businesses, before running body-building competitions. He was himself a large man, who took pleasure in telling journalists visiting his house full of statues of Buddha and Siamese or Burmese gods, how he became interested in South-Eastern art while travelling dirt roads in Thailand and Cambodia to explore fabulous ruins and local antiquities’ markets.

Latchford built a reputation as a world expert in Khmer antiquities, co-writing three reference books with the American academic Emma Bunker. In the 1970s he became one of the most prominent suppliers of Cambodian art to museums and collectors in the US and Europe, notably through Spink’s in London. Latchford has even been “described as a one-man supply-and-demand for Cambodian art for half-a-century,” according to Tess Davis, the director of the Antiquities Coalition. In 2010, Latchford told the Bangkok Post that “most of the pieces he has come across have been found and dug up by farmers in fields”. He liked to see himself as a rescuer of works of art which were long abandoned and might have been destroyed in Cambodia’s civil wars. His donations to the National Museum of Phnom Penh earned him a knighthood in 2008.

But scholars were concerned by the appearance in his books of several antiquities lacking a clear provenance. Latchford name’s appeared in the sale of several works of art from the Khmer capital Koh Ker which US museums like the Metropolitan and the Norton Collection have had to return to Cambodia since 2013. Sotheby’s was also forced to send back to Phnom Penh a statue from Koh Ker reclaimed by Cambodia. And, last November, a New York District Attorney announced the indictment of Douglas Latchford for alleged smuggling and trafficking in stolen and looted Cambodian antiquities. “In order to conceal that his antiquities were the product of looting and smuggling”, the indictment claims, Latchford allegedly created “false provenance” and “falsified invoices and shipping documents”.

Latchford always denied any wrongdoing and any involvement in smuggling. “His collection was substantially put together long before cultural heritage laws were introduced. The world was very different in those days, it is wrong to perceive his actions solely through a 2020s’ lens," a close friend of Latchford tells The Art Newspaper, adding that "without the passion and attention of people like him, vital objects would have been lost to the world".
https://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/do ... r-explorer

Latchford built a reputation as a world expert in Khmer antiquities, co-writing three reference books with the American academic Emma Bunker.

Douglas Latchford and Emma Bunker

Cambodia has expressed its support for a US court after it charged Douglas Latchford, a leading expert on Khmer antiquities, with smuggling looted Cambodian relics and helping to sell them on the international art market by concealing their tainted histories with falsified documentation.

The New York Times reported last week that prosecutors alleged Latchford, 88, a dealer in and collector of Southeast Asian antiquities, falsified documents to make looted treasures easier to sell on the art market.

It said that in a federal indictment unsealed on Wednesday, Latchford was accused of having served for decades as a “conduit” for Cambodian antiquities that had been excavated illegally from ancient jungle temples during unrest in the country starting in the mid-1960s, with the beginnings of the Cambodian civil war.

https://www.southeastasianarchaeology.c ... -smuggler/

Where are the artefacts now and what will happen to all the money that Latchford made from selling off Cambodia's national heritage ?

Another great article from The Diplomat:

Douglas Latchford: The Man Who Pillaged Cambodia
Latchford leaves behind a dark legacy of looting and cultural destruction, which will long outlive him.
By Tess Davis
August 21, 2020

Douglas Latchford, an English “adventurer” and antiquities collector once feted by royalty, died this month in Thailand — adding his name to a long list of villains who have escaped justice for crimes in the Cambodian Killing Fields.

The public life Latchford cultivated over decades in the penthouses and cricket clubs of Bangkok seems far removed from the armed conflict and mass murder that long raged just over the Cambodian border. It wasn’t. Latchford died under a felony indictment, fighting extradition to the United States for masterminding an organized artifact trafficking network that directly linked art world elites with the Khmer Rouge’s reign of terror.

Even today in a crowded global field, no single figure looms as large over a nation’s wholesale pillage. Experts are still uncovering the full picture, but their work has exposed Latchford as “a one-man-supply-and-demand” for Cambodian plunder during the kingdom’s decades of civil war, foreign occupation, and genocide. He laundered much of his loot (and the fakes he commissioned) onto the legitimate market — including American museums from coast to coast — but kept the greatest masterpieces for himself in a collection said to rival that of Cambodia’s National Museum.

Born in the British Raj, Latchford journeyed to Southeast Asia in the 1950s, seeking his fortune. He was drawn to newly independent Cambodia, and especially its ancient past, believing himself the reincarnation of a legendary king. He became a familiar sight at the ruins, so abundant in sacred statuary that French explorers had praised them as “open-air museums.” Yet having guarded their sanctuaries for centuries, these precious gods vanished in Latchford’s footsteps. By the 1960s, local expatriates were calling him “Dynamite Doug,” for his preferred method of extracting buried treasures.

If the story stopped there, Latchford may have been remembered as another colonial rogue, following the playbook of a bygone era. But everything changed in 1970 with the civil war, which would rage until the 1998 Khmer Rouge surrender. In the intervening years, communist insurgents murdered 2 million people, violence funded in part by a thriving illicit trade in timber, gemstones, and antiquities. In Douglas Latchford, they found not only a buyer, but a partner.

[Enjoying this article? Click here to subscribe for full access. Just $5 a month.]

Latchford used money and threats to protect his monopoly and his reputation. Security at his luxury Thai condo rivaled that of embassies, guarded by a pack of young muscled men, who frequently lived and traveled with him. While investigating his network, I was told more than once to drop my inquiries. A Bangkok journalist, whom I tried to interest in the story, flatly refused, citing Latchford’s connections to the Thai military and the going assassination rate.

Like many conmen, Latchford also used charm. He took great pains to paint himself as a “rescuer” of the kingdom’s heritage, giving his good and bad faith purchasers alike plausible deniability. He laundered his stolen goods through self-published tomes, which the Head of UNESCO Phnom Penh would later call “the inventory of the missing patrimony of Cambodia.” In these glossy pages, Latchford disguised illegal origins with false backstories, and likely physically modified works so they could not be traced (making it especially infuriating that some continue to praise his scholarship, since the historical record was one of his many casualties).

Latchford dedicated one volume to his biggest victim: “The Khmer people.” That inscription was followed by another irony: a foreword of gratitude from Cambodian leaders, wrongly leading some of Latchford’s apologists to claim the government condoned his pillage. To the contrary, Cambodian authorities fully supported his prosecution, and led the region in fighting the illicit trade. But even if officials in Phnom Penh had suspicions earlier, unlike the art market, for years they had no choice but to cooperate. Latchford had a passport and protection from Thailand, a powerful neighbor. His collection was out of reach in Bangkok, in a heavily secured compound, with the most prized pieces even farther away in London. One misstep and it would be lost.

Now, despite the best efforts of the Cambodian and U.S. governments, this collection may still disappear forever into the black market. However, in the United Kingdom, as the United States, possession of stolen property is a continuing crime. So while Latchford’s death has ended his prosecution, it may yet enable that of others, for he did not act alone. Some art world leaders were enthusiastic co-conspirators. Others may have turned a blind eye. But many out there know where the bodies are buried and his art is hidden. Now it is time to speak up.

Those who do not are — like Latchford — complicit in genocide.
https://thediplomat.com/2020/08/douglas ... -cambodia/

Opinion piece. Blog: https://art-crime.blogspot.com/2021/01/ ... -like.html
Sunday, January 31, 2021
Sometimes restitution is a little like putting lipstick on a pig

Left: Steve Green and the Controversial Coptic Galatians fragment
first offered on eBay in 2012 by Yakup Ekşioğlu.
Right: Douglas Latchford and the two plinths with the broken feet of ancient sandstone statues looted from the Prasat Chen temple complex in Koh Ker

Last week we have seen two eye-popping notices of "voluntary" restitution of ancient artefacts and papyri framents believed to have been plundered from their respective countries of origin.

In one instance, an article by Tom Mashberg, written for the New York Times on January 29th reported that Julia Ellen Latchford Copleston a/k/a Nawapan Kriangsak, has agreed to relinquish a total of 125 artefacts to Cambodia which had been acquired by her father, controversial antiquities dealer Douglas A.J. Latchford, a/k/a “Pakpong Kriangsak.” Prior to his death, Latchford's handling of suspect material from Cambodia, Thailand and India resulted in the US government filing a 26-page indictment via the Department of Justice's U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York on 27 November 2019. This case, unfortunately, concluded in advance of any possible legal ruling against the Thailand-based dealer, who died on 2 August 2020 before the bulk of the evidence gathered in the federal case against him could be heard in court.

The second announcement, delivered two days earlier by Steve Green, Chairman of the Museum of the Bible, was more discreetly posted on the museum's website and highlighted the return of a number of questionable acquisitions which have been discussed with some regularity on ARCA's blog as well as in greater detail on Faces & Voices, a specialist blog by Papyrologist and ancient historian Roberta Mazza. Mazza has more articles about the Green's acquisitions than I can link to, so I recommend our readership take some time exploring them all but perhaps starting here with one where she questions (again) the ever-changing provenance story surrounding the P.Sapph.Obbink fragment purportedly sold through a private sale treaty by Christie’s.

In Green's press announcement, he states that as of 7 January 2021, the Washington DC-based museum had transferred control of the fine art storage facility that housed the 5,000 Egyptian items to the U.S. government as part of "a voluntary administrative process." Unfortunately, the philanthropic founder of the museum has said very little about whether or not his museum will be more forthcoming about exactly whom the museum paid when purchasing the 8,106 clay objects with suspect or no provenance from the Republic of Iraq or the approximately 5,000 papyri fragments and accompanying mummy cartonnage which also came with suspect or no provenance from the Arab Republic of Egypt. All we know is that these objects are now, finally, going home. And while that is a great success for the countries they were taken from, it tells us practically nil about the men who engaged in their sale and profited from these same countries' exploitation.

At the end of their announcement, the Museum of the Bible's Chairman stated that going forward they would continue to look for ways to "partner with The Iraq Museum, The Coptic Museum, and other institutions, to provide assistance with preserving and celebrating the rich cultural histories of those countries and many others." I truly doubt, given the circumstances, that the Egyptian government will be taking Mr. Green up on this proposal.
And so the litigation in these matters, at least as it relates to Iraq and Egypt, appear to be drawing to a close.

With the flourish of pens in the plump fingers of lawyers, these carefully-timed, and responsibility-for-wrong-doing-absent restitutions by members of the wealthy Houses of Latchford and Green are released to the public without the impediment of contradiction. Sanitised proclamations which imply good deeds done under trying circumstances, but which impart little about the actual motivations of their delayed generosity.

Most of us, who have been closely following these events can speculate as to the pressure points behind the disputants' seemingly magnanimous handovers and come away with our own conclusions, but our speculation will never give us their complete stories. It is reasonable to assume that these individuals, and/or their museum, were motivated, in whole or in part, by a desire to put an end to a publically embarrassing chapter to their respective family's cultural heritage acquisition histories, but their decisions should not be read as merely repentant.

In relinquishing these artefacts to Cambodia, Egypt and Iraq, the Latchfords and Greens seek to mitigate the damages, financial and reputational, that these scandals have caused them. And with that in mind, their decisions can not simply be seen in a vacuum of attempting to right past wrongs. They are assuredly more strategic than what is within the purview of the public domain.

Seen through this narrow lens, these very public announcements of voluntary restitution, published in newspapers with large readership or on museum's websites, serve only to cosmetically cover, not correct, the public blemishes their respective criminal investigations have brought to light over the last ten years. Actions which, when explored more deeply, can be seen as not only embarrassing, or ethically negligent, but potentially criminal, brought about by the direct involvement of staff and family members who should have, or definitely did know, better.

Despite these joyous restitutions, we cannot ascertain what catalyst, in each of these drawn-out processes of ensuring restorative justice, brought Mr Green and Ms. Copleston to the restitution table. Usually, in situations like this, written agreements between the parties make it unlikely that anyone will be at legal liberty to openly discuss the negotiations between the aggrieved parties. In the MotB case, that includes the unspoken details behind the more than three years of back and forth discussions that the museum itself has admitted took place prior to the culmination of this week's announcement.

Likewise, by bequeathing his 1,000-year-old Khmer Dynasty collection to his daughter, Douglas Latchford left his offspring with more than just $50 million worth of valuable ancient art. He left her holding a hand grenade with a pulled pin that she doggedly continued to hold some five months after her father's death. For no matter how magnanimous Copleston's repatriation gestures to Cambodia may seem in print, her waiting this long to relinquish the sculptures begs its own questions as to motivating factors.

Why would a lawyer such as herself, who by her own statement in the New York Times defensively admitted that her father "started his collection in a very different era" not have advised her ailing father, who was facing prosecution on his death bed, to clear the family name, if not his own, by simply returning the artefacts to Cambodia himself while he was still living? Or why, since Latchford's death, has Copleston, not distanced herself from suspicion by voluntarily doing so immediately after any wills for her father were read?

As regards both of these restitutions I would ask these individuals why, with these grand gestures of reconciliation, did neither party turn over the purchase and sale records for these objects. Something which would truly make reparations as doing so would allow illicit trafficking researchers and law enforcement investigators to trace and return other pieces of history handled by the individuals responsible for engaging in these two unseemly debacles.
By: Lynda Albertson
Full article at the top of page.

UPDATE

Manhattan D.A.’s Office Returns 27 Antiquities to Cambodia
By U.S. Mission Cambodia | 10 June, 2021 |

Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance, Jr. today announced the return of 27 antiquities valued at approximately $3.8 million to the people of Cambodia during a repatriation ceremony attended by Cambodia’s Minister of Culture and Fine Arts, H.E. Dr. Phoeurng Sackona, Cambodian Ambassador to the United States, Chum Sounry and U.S. Homeland Security Investigations (“HSI”) Special Agent in Charge Erik Rosenblatt.

“The repatriation of these 27 stunning relics to the people of Cambodia restores an important link between the nation’s classical Angkor era and its modern customs and beliefs that, for far too long, was disrupted by the greed of stolen antiquities traffickers,” said District Attorney Vance. “Today’s event is a powerful reminder that individuals who plunder and sell culturally significant items are committing crimes not only against a country’s heritage but also its present and future. I want to thank my Office’s Antiquities Trafficking Unit and our partners at Homeland Security Investigations for their relentless efforts that have resulted in nearly 400 treasures being returned to 10 countries over the past year. I look forward to further repatriations in the near future.”

“Homeland Security Investigations is committed to combatting the plundering of cultural heritage and the illicit trafficking of cultural property,” said HSI New York Special Agent in Charge, Peter C. Fitzhugh. “Today, more than two dozen antiquities are being returned to the people of Cambodia; and while the underground market value of these items is in the millions, these pieces are invaluable to the preservation of Cambodian history. HSI New York is proud to have worked this investigation with DANY that led to the ultimate return of these items to their home country, as each artifact is a testimony to the rich cultural heritage of Cambodia.”

“This ceremony is a tribute to the cooperation between our two countries on preventing the looting and trafficking of Khmer artifacts,” said W. Patrick Murphy, U.S. Ambassador to Cambodia. “The United States is proud to play a role in securing the cultural heritage of the Cambodian people.”

“The win-win policy of the Royal Government that has brought peace to Cambodia is a strong foundation for the preservation of the nation’s culture,” said H.E. Dr. Phoeurng Sackona, Minister of Culture and Fine Arts. “The repatriation provides evidence that even during the difficult circumstances of the COVID-19 pandemic, Cambodia remains committed to finding and bringing back our ancestors’ souls that departed their motherland over a number of years, including during a period of war. Cambodia sincerely thanks and praises the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, HSI and all relevant authorities such as Cambodia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation and the US Embassy in Cambodia. The Minister also thanks other individuals and private institutions, including Museums Partner, that have provided support for this important accomplishment, including the transportation of these invaluable statues back to Cambodia for the benefit of the Cambodian people and the world.”

The items returned today include 24 seized pursuant to the investigation of SUBHASH KAPOOR, as well as three pursuant to the investigation of NANCY WIENER.

For many years, the Manhattan D.A.’s Antiquities Trafficking Unit, along with law enforcement partners at HSI, has been investigating KAPOOR and his co-conspirators for the illegal looting, exportation, and sale of ancient art from Sri Lanka, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Cambodia, Thailand, Nepal, Indonesia, Myanmar, and other nations. KAPOOR and his co-defendants generally smuggled looted antiquities into Manhattan and sold the pieces through KAPOOR’S Madison Avenue-based gallery, Art of the Past. From 2011 to 2020, the D.A.’s Office and HSI recovered more than 2,500 items trafficked by KAPOOR and his network. The total value of the pieces recovered exceeds $143 million.

The D.A.’s Office first issued an arrest warrant for KAPOOR in 2012. In July 2019, a complaint and series of arrest warrants for KAPOOR and seven co-defendants were filed and an indictment was filed in October 2019. In July 2020, the DA’s Office filed extradition paperwork for KAPOOR, who is currently in prison in India pending the completion of his ongoing trial in Tamil Nadu.

The three non-Kapoor pieces being returned to Cambodia resulted from the investigation of WIENER, who was charged in December 2016 with Criminal Possession of Stolen Property in the First Degree, Criminal Possession of Stolen Property in the Second Degree, and Conspiracy in the Fourth Degree. Between at least 1999 and 2016, WIENER allegedly utilized her New York-based business, Nancy Wiener Gallery, to buy, smuggle, launder, and sell millions of dollars’ worth of antiquities stolen from Afghanistan, Cambodia, China, India, Pakistan, and Thailand.

The items repatriated to Cambodia today included several Angkorian Buddhist statues and Hindu statues such as a bronze meditating Buddha on a Naga, a statue of Shiva, and a Buddhist sandstone sculpture of Prajnaparamita.
https://kh.usembassy.gov/manhattan-d-a- ... -cambodia/

U.S. Returns $3.8 Million Worth of Looted Artifacts to Cambodia
Published: 14 June 2021
Written by David Klein
U.S. authorities repatriated 27 looted antiquities to Cambodia, most of which were confiscated from a Manhattan gallery whose owner was arrested in India.

In the past few months, the Manhattan D.A. has repatriated 390 items from Kapoors collection to their countries of origin. (Source: Manhattan DA)Valued at approximately US$3.8 million, the returned items included several Angkorian Buddhist statues and Hindu statues such as a bronze meditating Buddha on a Naga, a statue of Shiva, and a Buddhist sandstone sculpture of Prajnaparamita.

Manhattan’s District Attorney Cy Vance handed the artifacts over to Cambodia's Minister of Culture and Fine Arts, Dr. Phoeurng Sackona and Cambodian Ambassador to the United States, Chum Sounry during a ceremony in New York last week.

“The repatriation of these 27 stunning relics to the people of Cambodia restores an important link between the nation’s classical Angkor era and its modern customs and beliefs that, for far too long, was disrupted by the greed of stolen antiquities traffickers,” Vance said.

Of the 27 pieces, 24 came from the collection of notorious New York art dealer, Subhash Kapoor.

For years, the Manhattan D.A.’s Antiquities Trafficking Unit and Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) have been investigating Kapoor and his co-conspirators for the illegal looting, exportation, and sale of ancient art from Sri Lanka, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Cambodia, Thailand, Nepal, Indonesia, Myanmar, and other nations, a statement from the attorney’s office said.

The group smuggled the items into the U.S. and sold them in Kapoor’s gallery on Madison Avenue.

“From 2011 to 2020, the D.A.’s Office and HSI recovered more than 2,500 items trafficked by Kapoor and his network. The total value of the pieces recovered exceeds $143 million,” the D.A. office said.

In the past few months, the Manhattan D.A. has repatriated 390 items from Kapoors collection to their countries of origin. Earlier last week, the D.A. also returned 12 artifacts to China, and in April, some 33 artifacts to Afghanistan as well.

Kapoor, who has been languishing in prison in Chennai, India, since his arrest in 2012, has been charged with running a massive smuggling ring that specialized in religious artifacts from South and Central Asia.

The illegal antiquities trade is a multi-billion dollar global industry according to a 2018 report by Standard Charter Bank, and it’s beneficiaries are not just high society art aficionados like Kapoor and his Manhattan clients, but often the trade is a major funding source for criminal and militant groups on the supply side.

“You cannot look at it separately from combating trafficking in drugs and weapons. We know that the same groups are engaged, because it generates big money,” said Catherine de Bolle, Executive Director of Europol after a major crackdown on the illegal antiquities trade last May.

The looting of cultural property from active war zones, like Afghanistan and Cambodia in the 1970s is considered a war crime under the 1954 Hague Convention.

“The repatriation provides evidence that even during the difficult circumstances of the COVID-19 pandemic, Cambodia remains committed to finding and bringing back our ancestors’ souls that departed their motherland over a number of years, including during a period of war,” said Dr. Phoeurng Sackona, Minister of Culture and Fine Arts.
https://www.occrp.org/en/daily/14619-u- ... o-cambodia

Department of Justice
U.S. Attorney’s Office
Southern District of New York
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Thursday, July 15, 2021
10th Century Statue Looted From Cambodian Temple Is Subject Of Forfeiture Action Filed In Manhattan Federal Court

Audrey Strauss, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, announced today the filing of a civil complaint seeking forfeiture of a 10th Century Khmer sandstone statue – Skanda on a Peacock – for the purpose of returning it to the Kingdom of Cambodia.

The statue was stolen from the Prasat Krachap temple at Koh Ker in Cambodia, and sold by antiquities dealer Douglas Latchford into the international art market. Skanda on a Peacock is considered to be a masterpiece of artistic achievement and a valuable part of the Cambodian cultural heritage. The owner of Skanda on a Peacock has voluntarily relinquished possession of the statue to the custody of HSI.

Manhattan U.S. Attorney Audrey Strauss said: “Skanda on a Peacock is a work of great historical, religious, and artistic significance to the people of Cambodia. With this action, we reaffirm our commitment to ending the sale of illegally trafficked antiquities in the United States, and begin the process of returning Skanda on a Peacock to its rightful home.”
Full story: https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/10 ... -manhattan

UPDATE

A British Art Restorer Has Been Arrested for His Role in a $143 Million Asian Antiquities Smuggling Ring
Neil Perry Smith is the second person to be arraigned in the case.*
Sarah Cascone, July 21, 2021

Uma Parvati, Naga Buddha, and Shiva Nataraja that were among the stolen items allegedly possessed and restored by Neil Perry Smith. Photo courtesy of the Manhattan D.A.’s Antiquities Trafficking Unit.

The Manhattan district attorney’s office has taken a key next step in prosecuting the $143 million Asian antiquities smuggling ring led by disgraced dealer Subhash Kapoor with the arraignment yesterday of 58-year-old British art restorer Neil Perry Smith on 29 counts.

Smith is accused of restoring 22 illegally obtained Cambodian, Thai, and Nepalese antiquities, collectively valued at over $32 million, ahead of their sale at Kapoor’s New York gallery, Art of the Past. He was tasked with cleaning and repairing the stolen artworks, removing dirt and other signs that they had been looted and smuggled into the country in order to deceive potential buyers.

“The arraignment of Neil Perry Smith serves as a reminder that behind every antiquities trafficking ring preying upon cultural heritage for profit, there is someone reassembling and restoring these looted pieces to lend the criminal enterprise a veneer of legitimacy,” district attorney Cy Vance Jr. said in a statement. “Without restorers to disguise stolen relics, there would be no laundered items for antiquities traffickers to sell.”

The state has charged Smith with criminal possession of stolen property, grand larceny, conspiracy, and scheme to defraud, among other counts. The works in question include bronze murti statues representing the goddess Uma Parvati, which are worth $3.5 million, and a $5 million Shiva Nataraja statue.

After Kapoor hired Smith to restore an 11th century ceramic Naga Buddha figure in 2009, the dealer allegedly created a false provenance for the work. He attempted to sell it for $1.2 million, despite having valued it at $5,504.45 on shipping documents following the restoration.

Smith also has ties to British art collector and dealer Douglas A.J. Latchford, who was charged with trafficking antiquities before his death last August, according to the Association for Research Into Crimes Against Art. Latchford’s daughter has since arranged to repatriate his collection to Cambodia.

Full article: https://news.artnet.com/art-world/briti ... ng-1991071

* Note that five suspects are still on the run: "Kapoor and Smith were first indicted in October 2019 along with six other co-defendants. Smith is the second to be arraigned, following Brooklyn restorer Richard Salmon. The others, Sanjeeve Asokan, Dean Dayal, Ranjeet Kanwar, Aditya Rakash, and Vallabh Prakash, are still at large."

Long read: https://art-crime.blogspot.com/search/l ... erry-Smith

Wednesday, July 21, 2021
A "Homeland" welcome for Neil Perry-Smith in New York

Shiva and Skanda 10th Century CE 130 cm
We are standing in front of a single-piece sand-stone sculpture of a serenely smiling cross-legged Shiva being worshipped by the small, dumpy Skanda (Fig. 3), the one the Guimet questioned. It was probably made in the second quarter of the 10th century for Jayavarman IV's new capital at Lingapura, today's Koh Ker, and is possibly a symbol of the king and his son. 'This is spectacular. I was shown a picture of it in pieces in the mid-Eighties. The head of Shiva was off, the arms broken, Skanda's feet broken. I bought it. It arrived in three pieces. Neil Perry-Smith, one of the leading restorers of stone, metal and gold, put it together. These had been clean breaks, there's no restoration.' Indeed, the breaks are invisible. 'Go by the wall so you can see Skanda's face', he says, so that I can observe how the artist has trapped religious bliss in the face. 'I sum it up in one word: adoration.'

After boarding a plane in the UK for New York and arriving yesterday, Neil Perry-Smith surrendered voluntarily to officers from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) in relation to an arrest warrant issued against him through the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office for his alleged role in an international smuggling ring that trafficked in stolen works of art. According to Manhattan Assistant District Attorneys Matthew Bogdanos and Christopher Hirsch, the well-organized smuggling network is believed to have laundered hundreds of objects out of India and other source countries onto the licit art market in an operation that is believed to have lasted for as long as thirty years.

On 8 July 2019 arrest warrants were issued for eight defendants involved in the scheme listing a total of 213 Counts, ranging from grand larceny to criminal possession of stolen property. The original 28 counts listed against Perry-Smith in the Manhattan complaint were:
1. PL 165.54 Criminal Possession of Stolen Property in the First Degree (7 counts)
2. PL 155.40(1) Grand Larceny in the Second Degree (5 counts)
3. PL 165.52 Criminal Possession of Stolen Property in the Second Degree (13 counts)
4. PL 165.50 Criminal Possession of Stolen Property in the Third Degree (1 count)
5. PL 105.10(1) Conspiracy in the Fourth Degree (1 count)
6. PL 190.65(1)(b) Scheme to Defraud in the First Degree (1 count)

**Note: It there now seems to be an additional 29th count.

In that previous DANY's painstakingly detailed felony arrest warrant, it is alleged that Perry-Smith was one of at least seven individuals identified through their investigation who participated in an international criminal network handling material later sold by disgraced ancient art dealer Subhash Kapoor and his former gallery Art of the Past, once located at 1242 Madison Avenue, in New York.

As a result of this ongoing international investigation into this network's operations, officers with DHS-HSI, working with the District Attorney's Office in Manhattan conducted a total of twelve raids, resulting in the seizure of 2,622 objects valued at no less than $107,682,000 from Kapoor's gallery and numerous storage locations within the jurisdiction of the state of New York.

The July 2019 Felony Arrest Warrant document listed 72 stolen antiquities possessed by Subhash Kapoor or members of his network from 1986 to 2016 giving an estimated value to the pieces at $79,101,000. Of those 72, only 33 had been identified and seized by law enforcement as of the summer of 2019. Thirty-nine other artefacts had still not been located and were estimated to be worth no less than $35,835,000. Investigators suspect that Kapoor orchestrated to have the missing objects hidden sometime following his initial arrest in Germany in 2011 and prior to his extradition from Europe to India to answer to the charges he faces for the trafficking in ancient artefacts from his home country.

In July 2020, the Manhattan DA’s Office also filed extradition paperwork for Subhash Kapoor, in answer to their previous arrest warrant relating to his alleged crimes carried out in the United States. In the meanwhile, Kapoor remains in the high-security block of Tiruchirapalli Central Prison in the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu pending the completion of his first trial in India.

As it relates to Neil Perry-Smith's alleged role, little detail was mentioned in the lengthy July 2019 Felony Arrest Warrant document. It stated simply that Subhash Kapoor shipped artefacts with forged bills of lading, first to a company in Hong Kong, while arranging for the antiquities to be restored. Those artefacts would then be shipped from Hong Kong onward to either Neil Perry-Smith in London or to Richard Salmon in New York for restoration, who would then work on the objects before forwarding the conserved artefacts on to Kapoor for sale through his New York gallery.

“Without restorers to disguise stolen relics, there would be no laundered items for antiquities traffickers to sell.” -- District Attorney Vance.

But as we can read from the November 2008 quote excerpted at the top of this blog post, we know that Neil Perry-Smith also restored works of ancient art for at least one other suspect ancient art dealer also previously under indictment for the handling of looted antiquities.

Taken from an interview article in Apollo Magazine, we learn that Perry-Smith restored a 10th century Cambodian Khmer sculpture of Shiva & Skanda for the deceased British art collector and dealer Douglas A.J. Latchford. One that, in Latchford's own words, arrived to the Thai-based collector-dealer broken in three pieces, with clean breaks. Clean breaks are a tell-tale sign that the artwork may have been intentionally broken, with breaks such as these, along specific, easily repairable points being done to ease transport and future reassembly, when large cumbersome sculptures are removed from their find spots by looters...

Long read. For those interested in Douglas Latchford, he gets a big mention further down the article*.

Property and Theft: A History of Looting in Southeast Asia
Max Crosbie-JonesFeatures14 September 2021

In Southeast Asia the antiquities trade is under closer scrutiny than ever before, but if the region is to keep hold of and preserve its heritage, there’s a long way further to go

During the early 1920s, the American poet and playwright Arthur Davison Ficke did some opportunistic plundering at the ruins of Angkor Wat. There, while rambling around the ‘finely proportioned and lofty pyramidal temple’ of Takeo, he had come across two dark, basalt sculptures: one of the Hindu deity Shiva ‘standing in a lordly attitude of repose’, the other his ‘delicately but powerfully moulded’ wife Parvati. Astounded at their beauty, he was suddenly overcome with a mixture of awe and acquisitiveness. Before he knew it, Parvati’s loose head – ‘severe and magnificent, noble and sensual, disdainful and exquisite’ – was in his possession.
A sleepless night ensued. ‘My triumph, and the desire to look incessantly at that beautiful cold proud face, kept me awake,’ he wrote in his 1921 account for The North American Review. ‘For me, the might and majesty of Angkor was all concentrated in that head.’ Mostly, though, he felt vile for having committed ‘a terrible and irreparable injury’ to a sublime work of art, analogous in his mind with ‘the Winged Victory which now stands headless at the top of the great stairway of the Louvre’. Come dawn, Parvati was whole again.
https://artreview.com/a-history-of-loot ... opriation/

* For example:

Given the exceptionalism that looters of Khmer treasure have displayed through history, such attempts to sensitise collectors may prove decisive. Latchford excused his predilection for exquisite stone and metal gods and goddesses by saying, as he told the Bangkok Post, ‘they would likely have been shot up for target practice by the Khmer Rouge.’ A believer in reincarnation, he also justified his activities by saying that everything he collected had once belonged to him in a former life.