JAKARTA: The United States has repatriated two eighth-century bronze statues looted from Indonesia after they were recovered as part of an investigation into the illicit trafficking network of infamous antiquity dealer Douglas Latchford.
According to the Office of the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, the statues were trafficked into the US by Latchford, who was indicted in 2019 for allegedly orchestrating a decades-long scheme to traffic and sell looted Cambodian and other South-East Asian antiquities on the international art market.
The charges against Latchford were dismissed following his death in 2020. However, in 2021, a US collector voluntarily surrendered 34 Cambodian and South-East Asian antiquities acquired from Latchford, including the two Indonesian bronze statues.
The artworks were formally returned during a repatriation ceremony at the Indonesian Consulate in New York last week.
"Today, we celebrate the return of Indonesia's cultural heritage to the Indonesian people," US Attorney Jay Clayton said at the ceremony.
"This Office is committed to thwarting the illicit trafficking of looted and stolen art and antiquities. We will continue to partner with Homeland Security Investigations to end callous profiteering from stolen artworks of cultural significance, and we thank the collector of these works for their voluntary safe return. It is with great pleasure that we send these artworks on the final leg of their journey home," Clayton added.
The repatriated artefacts are two eighth-century standing bronze sculptures of the four-armed Avalokiteshvara, a revered bodhisattva in Buddhism associated with compassion and mercy.
According to US authorities, the sculptures were looted from archaeological sites in Indonesia decades ago before being sold to Latchford who was based in Bangkok.
The exact archaeological sites from which the statues were taken remains unclear.
Between 2003 and 2007, Latchford sold the statues, along with other South-East Asian antiquities, to a US collector.
Prosecutors said Latchford concealed the illicit origins of the artifacts by withholding information from the collector and falsely representing their provenance, allowing the stolen objects to enter the international art market.
Latchford was a British antiquities dealer whose career became synonymous with the illicit trade in Khmer antiquities and the large-scale looting of Cambodia's archaeological heritage.
Latchford spent much of his life in Thailand and became a Thai citizen in the 1960s and for more than four decades, Latchford traded Cambodian antiquities and other artefacts from South-East Asia, building a reputation as one of the world's foremost collectors and dealers of Khmer art.
That reputation unravelled in 2019 when US prosecutors alleged he had played a central role in trafficking looted antiquities from Cambodia's ancient temples to wealthy private collectors and major museums around the world. Latchford denied the allegations.
Following his death, Latchford's daughter agreed to return his collection which was valued at more than US$50 million to Cambodia.
Since then, museums and private collectors across the US, Europe and Australia have also repatriated dozens of Khmer artefacts linked to the dealer, as investigators and Cambodian authorities continue efforts to recover the country's looted cultural heritage.
The latest repatriation is not the first return of Indonesian cultural heritage from the US.
In 2024, US authorities returned three Indonesian artefacts valued at around Rp6.5 billion that had been trafficked into the country. The objects included a stone relief from the Majapahit period, a seated bronze Buddha statue and a standing bronze statue of the Hindu deity Vishnu.
According to US authorities, the objects were recovered during an investigation into an international antiquities trafficking network involving Indian-American art dealer Subhash Kapoor and US antiquities dealer Nancy Wiener.
The case also led to the recovery of 27 Cambodian artefacts.
Kapoor and his co-defendants allegedly sold looted antiquities through the Manhattan-based Art of the Past gallery.
Between 2011 and 2023, investigators from the Manhattan District Attorney's Office and the US Department of Homeland Security recovered more than 2,500 antiquities allegedly trafficked by Kapoor and his network, with a combined estimated value exceeding $143 million. - The Jakarta Post/ANN
