NY art dealer arrested for selling stolen Asian artefacts.(Plus Douglas Latchford Death and Updates)

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Re: NY art dealer arrested for selling stolen Asian artefacts.(Plus Douglas Latchford Death and Updates)

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CEOCambodiaNews wrote: Sat Oct 09, 2021 4:50 pm Image
Shamvara and A Dakini, c. 1100. Cambodia, Angkor, 11th century. Bronze; overall: 14.8 cm (5 13/16 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Leonard C. Hanna, Jr. Fund 1985.92 - CLEVELAND MUSEUM OF ART DIGITAL COLLECTION
Those look really weird, I've never seen any bronzes from here that look anything like that. The heads are out of proportion and those poses don't look like any I've seen portrayed here before.
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Re: NY art dealer arrested for selling stolen Asian artefacts.(Plus Douglas Latchford Death and Updates)

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The Denver Art Museum to return four artifacts to Cambodia after Pandora Papers investigation coverage of indicted art dealer
The museum’s plan to send the ancient relics to their native country follows reporting that showed they were linked to Douglas Latchford, indicted in 2019 after decades of alleged trafficking.
By Malia Politzer and Peter Whoriskey
October 17, 2021
Image
The Denver Art Museum is preparing to return four antiquities to Cambodia following a news media collaboration that reported the pieces are linked to a man charged with trafficking looted artifacts.

The four antiquities to be returned came to the museum through Douglas Latchford, who in 2019 was indicted by U.S. prosecutors after decades of alleged trafficking in looted artifacts from the Khmer empire, which flourished in Southeast Asia a thousand years ago.

The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, the Washington Post and other media organizations in the Pandora Papers collaboration began contacting museum officials about pieces in their collection linked to Latchford in July and followed up with letters in September. The museum removed the four artifacts from its collection after receiving a letter from the news organizations seeking comment about the items.

“The museum is now working with the government to return the pieces to Cambodia,” museum spokesperson Kristy Bassuener said in an email.

The collaboration reported that 10 museums around the world held at least 43 relics that passed through the hands of Latchford or those of his associates identified by prosecutors.

The four relics from Denver are of “extraordinary cultural significance,” said Bradley J. Gordon, one of the lawyers representing the Cambodian Ministry of Culture.
https://www.icij.org/investigations/pan ... rt-dealer/
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Re: NY art dealer arrested for selling stolen Asian artefacts.(Plus Douglas Latchford Death and Updates)

Post by CEOCambodiaNews »

Cambodia Says the Met Museum Has Dozens of Its Looted Antiquities
The country’s culture minister cites new evidence, including the account of a reformed looter, to assert that numerous artifacts at the Metropolitan Museum of Art were stolen from ancient sites.
By Tom Mashberg
Oct. 24, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ET

Cambodia has begun to press the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan to document how it acquired dozens of Khmer Empire antiquities that Cambodian officials, citing new evidence, believe were looted during the country’s decades of war and tumult.

Although Cambodia has pushed the Met and other museums in recent years for the return of individual statues and sculptures it says were pillaged between 1970 and 2000, this effort is far broader. Cambodian officials said they have developed a spreadsheet of 45 “highly significant” items at the Met that the evidence suggests were stolen before being donated or sold to the museum.

Officials with the U.S. Attorney’s Office, which has previously assisted Cambodia in recovering illicit antiquities, met with museum staff members last week to request they review the provenance of a number of the items, Cambodian officials said.

Federal officials declined to comment on any discussion with the museum’s staff, and the Met would not address the specifics of what Cambodian officials are describing as a rigorous new effort to reclaim their cultural heritage.

The Met said in a statement that it was following its “long and well-documented history of responding to claims regarding works of art, restituting objects where appropriate.”

It suggested it had begun to “proactively” research its collection independent of the Cambodian request.

“Recently, in light of new information on some pieces in our collection, we reached out to the U.S. Attorney’s office — to volunteer that we are happy to cooperate with any inquiry,” the statement said.

The scope of the Cambodian initiative, according to those directing it, is fueled by years of expanded legal investigation and archaeological research and by the disclosures of a former temple looter who admits to organizing the plunder of dozens of Khmer shrines from the 1970s to the 1990s.

That man, whom Cambodian officials refer to only as “Lion,” has spent two years escorting officials to dozens of remote sites where, Cambodians say, he and his gang systematically uprooted and carted away for sale massive stone statuary, intricate bronze sculptures and ceramic burial jars filled with royal gold and jewels. Most of those items, the former looter said, were sold through brokers in Thailand.

Cambodia’s culture minister, Phoeurng Sackona, said the former looter’s information was critical to identifying the 45 Met items that officials have focused on. They have also inspected the dates of the museum’s acquisitions and physical evidence like chiseled stands and broken remnants found at the original sites. Of the 45 artifacts, she said, “Lion” recognized 33 as items he removed himself and another 11 as matching the appearance of statues stolen by others.

The artifacts were acquired by the Met between the years 1977 and 2003, according to the research by Cambodian officials.

“It surprises me and disappoints me that there are so many statues of ours in the Met,” the culture minister said, adding: “We want to see the truth come out, we want to see all the facts come out about this. We want them all returned.”

In addition to the 45 items listed on the spreadsheet, Cambodian officials said they had questions about roughly 150 other artifacts in the Met’s collections that left Cambodia between 1970 and 2000, three decades during which the nation was torn apart by war, genocide and political upheaval.

In July, the U.S. attorney embraced the credibility of “Lion” when prosecutors cited him in court papers connected to the return of a Khmer statue, “Skanda on a Peacock,”* which he says he looted. An unidentified private owner voluntarily handed over that artifact, according to a Justice Department news release that identified “Lion” as Looter 1.
Full article: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/24/arts ... ities.html


* Skanda on a Peacock - further information:
Image
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.”
https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/10 ... -manhattan
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Re: NY art dealer arrested for selling stolen Asian artefacts.(Plus Douglas Latchford Death and Updates)

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Museums face pressure to explain presence of Cambodian relics linked to disgraced dealer Douglas Latchford
Expert says there is a "long list of returns expected from museums", as Cambodia cites new evidence of war-time looting
Vincent Noce
27 October 2021

Museums around the world are coming under mounting pressure to return or explain the presence of potentially looted Cambodian relics in their collections, some of which may have been obtained by the late Douglas Latchford, the disgraced Bangkok-based art dealer and collector.

The Denver Art Museum intends to return to Cambodia four cultural relics originally acquired Latchford, while the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York faces scrutiny from the Cambodian government in regard to dozens of Khmer Empire antiquities in its possession that officials believe were looted whilst the country was at war, citing newly discovered evidence.

Cambodian officials told The New York Times they have developed a spreadsheet of 45 “highly significant” items at the Met that, new evidence suggests, were stolen before being donated or sold to the museum.

Meanwhile, the media consortium working on the Pandora Papers, a cache of 11.8 million leaked offshore data files, reported that prosecutors identified at least 43 relics still held in ten museums around the world that passed through the hands of Latchford or his associates. The Pandora Papers also revealed that Latchford had close ties with offshore trusts.

“Practices have not changed since 2013. There is a long list of returns expected from museums,” says Eric Bourdonneau, the French scholar who identified a series of sculptures looted from a temple in the tenth-century Khmer capital Koh Ker, leading to restitutions from museums the Norton Simon Collection in Pasadena, California as well as The Met.

Andy Sinclair, a Denver Art Museum spokesman, tells The Art Newspaper that the museum had “deaccessioned” the Latchford items in September.

Since Latchford’s indictment in New York for art trafficking in 2019, “the museum has been in conversation with both the US and Cambodian governments regarding these objects and their return,” Sinclair says.

The Denver museum originally acquired from Latchford two artefacts: a 130cm-high statue of Prajnaparamita, the goddess of transcendent wisdom, from Angkor, and a statue of a Sun God recorded as being from the pre-Angkor period. They also purchased a lintel engraving depicting the sleep of Vishnu and an ancient bronze bell. The museum says it is also “conducting research on two objects from Thailand” that came from Latchford: an 18th- to 19th-century cabinet and ancient vessel.

The museum had a special connection with Latchford through his friend Emma Bunker, with whom he co-published catalogues on Khmer art. Bunker, who died in February, was a consultant and a lecturer for the Denver museum and a member of its board. In 2011, she was commissioned as an expert dealer by Sotheby’s when it tried to sell a sculpture of the Hindu warrior Duryodhana. The relic had to be returned in 2013 when Cambodia pre- sented evidence of the looting.

For decades, scholars have suspected that dozens of pieces appearing under the title Skanda Trust were in fact his property. A source directly involved in the matter confirmed Latchford’s ties with an offshore company named Skanda—but denied it was a reaction to the US investigation. “Skanda wasin fact set up in 2009, for fiscal reasons related to inheritance, before all of this happened,” says the source. Later, the collection was placed under the control of a new trust named Siva, while the financial assets were managed by the Jersey-based Skanda Trust.

Douglas Latchford’s daughter, Julia, decided to return her father’s entire Khmer collection to Cambodia after his death. However, she told The Art Newspaper that she did not act under threat of losing financial assets from the US. “She was never charged with anything, and she was never accused of trafficking items or money,” says a source close to the family.

“She gradually understood that her father might have misled her. The more she learned, the less confident she was she could separate legitimately acquired items. Ultimately, she had the feeling the whole lot belonged to Cambodia.”

The same source insists Latchford’s daughter is “fully cooperating with the Cambodian authorities, providing information and documents not only on her father’s dealings but on transactions on the Khmer art market”.

It is thought her co-operation could lead to new findings in American collections.
https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2021/10 ... -latchford
[Stay tuned for further revelations.]
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Re: NY art dealer arrested for selling stolen Asian artefacts.(Plus Douglas Latchford Death and Updates)

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Denver museum gives up allegedly looted Cambodian artifacts
yesterday [9 Nov,2021]

DENVER (AP) — Prosecutors have filed a complaint in federal court seeking the forfeiture of four Cambodian antiquities that were sold to the Denver Art Museum by a late art dealer accused of pillaging and illegally selling ancient artifacts.

The U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York filed the complaint Monday, and the museum has voluntarily relinquished possession of the artifacts, The Denver Post reported.

“Ensuring proper ownership of antiquities is an obligation the museum takes seriously, and the museum is grateful that these pieces will be returning to their rightful home,” the museum said in a statement.

The museum is still taking care of the works until they can be transferred, but they have been officially removed from the museum’s listed holdings.

The items include a 12th-to-13th century Khmer sandstone sculpture depicting standing Prajnaparamita, a 7th-to-8th century Khmer sandstone sculpture depicting standing Surya, an Iron Age Dong Son bronze bell and a 7th-to-8th century sandstone lintel depicting the sleep of Vishnu and birth of Brahma, according to the complaint.
https://apnews.com/article/business-lif ... 71ed0df942
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Re: NY art dealer arrested for selling stolen Asian artefacts.(Plus Douglas Latchford Death and Updates)

Post by CEOCambodiaNews »

Another private collection of looted Cambodian artifacts, which were acquired from the infamous trafficker Douglas Latchford, are to be returned to Cambodia.

Cambodia Recovers 28 Cambodian Cultural Artifacts from a Private Collector
13/01/22 00:02
Phnom Penh (FN), Jan. 12 – The Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts is honored to inform the public that, in support of a Memorandum of Understanding between the US Government and the Royal Government of Cambodia, an invaluable collection of Cambodian cultural artifacts will be returned to Cambodia.

“The US Government, led by the United States Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York (USAO-SDNY") and Homeland Security Investigations ("HSI"), has filed a civil forfeiture action relating to 28 Cambodian cultural artifacts. HSI, in cooperation with USAO SDNY, seized the sculptures from the person,” according to a press release seen by Fresh News on Wednesday.

“The artifacts include a large Ganesha believed to be from Prasat Bak temple at Koh Ker. According to witnesses, this statue was removed about 2 decades ago. In 2020, it was listed by The Antiquities Coalition as one of the top 10 most wanted looted statues in the world.”
Read in full below.
=FRESH NEWS
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Re: NY art dealer arrested for selling stolen Asian artefacts.(Plus Douglas Latchford Death and Updates)

Post by CEOCambodiaNews »

^ More details on the news item above.

Netscape Founder Gives Up $35 Million in Art Said to Be Stolen
By PressNewsAgency -
January 12, 2022
Image
A Ganesha statue, left, photographed in Cambodia by French archaeologists in 1934, and recently, right, in storage where James Clark kept his art collection after selling his penthouse in 2011. Authorities say the item was looted and sold to James H. Clark, who has agreed to surrender it

Over a period of five years, James H. Clark, the internet pioneer whose Netscape browser once commanded that market, spent roughly $35 million, he recalled in an interview, to purchase dozens of Cambodian and Southeast Asian antiquities, many of which he used to furnish a penthouse in Miami Beach.

On Tuesday, federal officials announced he had surrendered the collection of 35 items, now valued at much more than he paid, after investigators convinced him that they were all stolen and that he had been duped by a shady antiquities dealer.

A bronze goddess of motherhood with four arms and elongated earlobes. A massive seated elephant deity in stone bearing a crown and an ornamented trunk. A boat prow with a depiction of a half-human bird of prey astride a mythic serpent.

Items he very much appreciated. Gone. Gone. Gone.

Investigators told him, Mr. Clark said, “my doing this might inspire other people to do the same, but I’m not sure — it’s hard for people to give up something they paid for, but for me, why would you want to own something that was stolen?”

Mr. Clark, who was only identified as a “collector” in court papers filed Tuesday, was described by federal officials as the latest in a line of people taken in by Douglas A.J. Latchford, a British art dealer who died in 2020 while facing charges of antiquities trafficking.

Mr. Latchford, the investigators said, had during the period between 2003 and 2008 persuaded Mr. Clark to purchase the artifacts by providing him “false statements and fake provenance documents intended to hide the fact that the antiquities were the products of looting, and then imported the antiquities through lies on customs paperwork.”

Mr. Clark, 77, a former professor at Stanford who co-founded the Netscape Communications Corporation in 1994, said he had decided to buy the statuary and other relics after travels in Cambodia where he had seen some of the glories of its Khmer Empire, including the 12th-century temple complex at Angkor Wat.

“As a naïve person,” he said, “I had apparently somewhat ignorantly acquired one of the nicest private collections of Cambodian antiquities.”

After the sale of his penthouse, Mr. Clark’s collection had largely been kept for the last 10 years in two South Florida storage units, from which it was taken as part of the seizure by the federal government that he did not contest.

He said he made his decision after reviewing emails, photos and other evidence provided by federal agents who have spent several years investigating Mr. Latchford, who co-authored three books on Cambodian treasures that included images of some of Mr. Clark’s purchases.

The list of items and the allegations against Mr. Latchford were included in a complaint filed by federal prosecutors in United States District Court in Manhattan on Tuesday. In a news release, federal officials made note of the “collector’s” willingness to cooperate voluntarily and promptly.

Mr. Clark said he grew wary of Mr. Latchford, who had come recommended by an interior decorator, in 2008 when Mr. Clark sought assurances about a “beautiful” museum-quality female deity he was being offered for more than $30 million.

“I wanted some Cambodian government authentication of this thing and he would not respond to those messages and I finally just said, ‘There’s something wrong here — this guy is a bit of a crook,’” Mr. Clark recalled. “I had kind of concluded that it was something illicit because he would not respond to those requests.”
https://pressnewsagency.org/netscape-fo ... be-stolen/
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Re: NY art dealer arrested for selling stolen Asian artefacts.(Plus Douglas Latchford Death and Updates)

Post by CEOCambodiaNews »

Opinion
How the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network Might Curtail Antiquity Theft
The bottom line is that current laws on the trade of antiquities are insufficient, allowing the looting of culturally significant property to continue.
by Salisha Kayum 12 hours ago
Image
Cambodian statutes at Banteay Kdei temple in Angkor in Cambodia (photo by Gerd Eichmann, courtesy Wikimedia Commons)

“These objects are not just decorations but have spirits and are considered as lives. It is hard to quantify their loss to our temples and country — losing them was like losing the spirits of our ancestors.” These words from Phoeurng Sackona, the Cambodian Minister of Culture and Fine Arts, glean the significance of the bronze, sandstone, copper, and gold statues that were torn from their ancient Khmer temples and purloined into various museum and private collections around the world.

Such practice is common. Douglas Latchford, a self-proclaimed “adventurer scholar,” was personally responsible for the looting of hundreds of these ancient Khmer statutes, selling them to major museums, auction houses, and art dealers around the world. Latchford details his earlier involvement in Cambodia which consisted of helicoptering into remote temples stating he “found [himself] in the depths of the jungle walking along narrow overgrown paths flanked by ‘skull and crossbones’ on a red background, warning us of land mines.” He would go on to create false provenances, misrepresent these provenances, falsify invoices and related shipping documents in order to conceal that the antiquities that were looted, smuggled, or excavated without authorization as a part of a larger scheme to sell these antiquities on a lucrative international market.

Earlier this summer, Latchford died in Thailand fighting extradition. Institutions such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the British Museum, and the Denver Art Museum, still hold a number of these antiquities today. Thus, the question of what to do with the pieces Latchford pillaged highlights a struggle between rectifying a cultural underpinning of valuable antiquities by returning them to their rightful homes and a desire to legitimize such institutions by keeping these pieces in place. There is a clear grapple between these two concepts, although, according to Thach Phanit, one of the Cambodian archaeologists working on restoring some of the relics, “[r]eturning the antiquities he stole [would be] like returning the souls of the ancestors back to the country.”

The bottom line is that current laws on the trade of antiquities are insufficient, allowing the looting of culturally significant property to continue. As a result, it has become common practice for these culturally significant antiquities to be looted from source countries (typically less wealthy countries), secretly transported, and then sold to collectors and museums (in typically wealthier countries) where they remain long after someone like Latchford dies. Other famous examples include the looting of the Dream Tablet and the Lydian Hoard.

A number of factors make antiquities a prime target for criminal enterprise. Primarily, antiquities are a finite source. Unlike narcotics or arms which can be cultivated or manufactured, antiquities are in limited supply and can only be derived by looting cultural sites or trading them among existing collections. Plus, they can be small and easily movable. Because they are unique, they retain significant value over long periods of time, and thus these antiquities can be sold and resold over centuries. The United Nations Educations Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNSECO) has stated the profits from illicit antiquities exceeds those of other transnational crimes such as narcotics and arms.

The situation continues to get worse. A recent United States Senate report detailed two Russian Oligarchs evading sanctions by making transactions using art. These transactions were valued in the millions and caused an uproar on Capitol Hill. This incident has caused the financial sector to step in and issue its own set of regulations. The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) — the entity responsible for issuing regulations for financial institutions such as banks, check cashing operations, casinos, and the like — has decided to issue their own regulations governing the sale of art and antiquities.


According to FinCEN, these regulations are intended to stop crimes “relating to antiquities and art [that] include looting or theft, the illicit excavation of archaeological items, smuggling, and the sale of stolen or counterfeit objects,” as well as crimes “relating to antiquities and art [that] include money laundering and sanctions violations, and have been linked to transnational criminal networks, international terrorism, and the persecution of individuals or groups on cultural grounds.” On March 9, 2021, FinCEN added the trade of art and antiquities to the Bank Secrecy Act, requiring the filing of “suspicious activity” reports, including “details that may assist in the identification of (1) the objects connected to the financial transactions, (2) other transactions or proposed transactions that may involve antiquities or art, and (3) any other relevant information.” It did not stop there.

On September 23, 2021, FinCEN opened notice and comment on proposed regulation that would seek to end the looting of cultural property, among other art and antiquity related crimes by imposing certain requirements on those engaged in the trade of art and antiquities. FinCEN urged members of the regulated community — the antiquities industry, law enforcement, civil society groups, and the broader public — to submit written comments providing further insight into these regulations. The comment period closed on October 25, 2021.
Such regulation could be pivotal towards mending the issues at hand if crafted correctly. If not, more Latchfords will continue to loot pieces that are valuable to cultures, just as he did the artifacts taken from the Cambodian Khmer Temples. Without this key federal legislation, the antiquities trade will continue to operate at a pace that makes these “adventurer scholars” the luminaries of stolen artifacts and impoverishes source countries around the world.

https://hyperallergic.com/720441/how-th ... ity-theft/
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Re: NY art dealer arrested for selling stolen Asian artefacts.(Plus Douglas Latchford Death and Updates)

Post by CEOCambodiaNews »

Cambodia Calls on U.K. Museums to Return Objects Allegedly Looted by Disgraced Dealer Douglas Latchford
Alex Greenberger
May 13, 2022 12:52pm

Cambodia is urging U.K. officials to investigate British institutions for possibly harboring stolen artifacts obtained by Douglas Latchford, the late British dealer who has been accused of looting Cambodian or Khmer artifacts.

Earlier this week, Cambodia sent the British Museum and the Victoria & Albert Museum, both in London, a list of objects that Latchford may have looted, according to a report from the BBC. Cambodia said it believes that the British Museum owns 100 objects from the country that passed through Latchford’s hands and that the V&A owns 50.

Representatives for the institutions both told the BBC that they were researching the artifacts. The British Museum spokesperson said that it looks for any “possible ethical or legal issues” when acquiring works.

Until recently, most of the focus on Latchford has been his connections to United States museums, some of which hold artifacts believed to have passed through his hands.

Latchford, who died in 2020, amassed a significant collection of Cambodian antiquities worth millions of dollars. Many of the objects that he owned may have been taken during the mid- to late ’70s, during a period when the Khmer Rouge held power in Cambodia, resulting in bloodshed and turmoil.

“This was a time of conflict. The whole world knew it,” Brad Gordon, a lawyer representing the Cambodian Ministry of Culture, told the BBC. “Large museums like the British Museum or the V&A, they shouldn’t have accepted these pieces.”
https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/c ... 234628654/
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Re: NY art dealer arrested for selling stolen Asian artefacts.(Plus Douglas Latchford Death and Updates)

Post by CEOCambodiaNews »

More information concerning Douglas Latchford and accomplices is revealed here; long read:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-06-10/ ... /101118586
Background Briefing has traced artefacts sold by the David Jones Art Gallery to some of Australia's most significant South-East Asian art collections, including items in the National Gallery of Australia, the Art Gallery of New South Wales, the Art Gallery of South Australia and the National Gallery of Victoria.

The David Jones Art Gallery's sales records give a snapshot of their clientele.
They include a cross-section of prominent Australians and international figures. Among them are former World Bank president Sir James David Wolfensohn; Lady Schlink — also known as Dr Margaret Mulvey, the pioneering gynaecologist; Princess Diana's stepfather, Peter Shand Kydd; Sir Nicholas Sekers, a British-based industrialist; newspaper owner James Fairfax and others.

However, Background Briefing can reveal one major supplier to the David Jones Art Gallery was implicated in a landmark US art theft case, where evidence suggested that he falsified provenance and worked with a notorious accused art smuggler.

The supplier, Chinese-Thai art dealer Peng Seng, also known as Arthorn Sirikantraporn, worked with accused art smuggler Douglas Latchford to falsify provenance details and help smuggle items, according to evidence in the case.

Peng Seng's ties to Douglas Latchford are highly significant.

During the 60s and 70s, Thailand was a gateway for stolen Khmer artefacts smuggled across the border.

Among the many Khmer art dealers who operated out of Thailand, none are as notorious as Latchford.

In 2012, the Bangkok art dealer was revealed as being at the centre of a US investigation into the sale of a looted Cambodian temple guardian by auction house Sotheby's.

He was later charged with smuggling offences in 2019, when prosecutors alleged his artefacts were the product of "looting, unauthorised excavation and illicit smuggling", and that he had covered up their origins by creating false provenance.

"Latchford built a career out of the smuggling and illicit sale of priceless Cambodian antiquities, often straight from archaeological sites, in the international art market," US attorney Geoffrey Berman said at the time.

The David Jones Art Gallery supplier, Peng Seng, was referred to in the 2019 indictment against Latchford under the alias "the Thai Dealer".

His identity can now be revealed, after the ABC obtained an unredacted 1974 letter detailing his involvement and collusion with Latchford in falsifying provenance records. The letter, which was from a prominent London-based auction house at the time, was put forward as evidence by US prosecutors in their recent case against Latchford.
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