KHMER TREASURES RETURNED TO CAMBODIA. NEXT UP THE $12 MILLION HELD IN JERSEY?

BACKGROUND

• Douglas Latchford was a prominent art dealer known for his extensive collection of Southeast Asian antiquities, particularly from Cambodia.
• However, his reputation took a significant hit when he was indicted in 2019 by the Southern District of New York.
• The indictment charged him with wire fraud, smuggling, and conspiracy related to his trafficking of looted Cambodian artifacts.
• Latchford was accused of creating false provenance documents and falsifying invoices and shipping documents to misrepresent the origins of the artifacts.
• He allegedly smuggled these looted items from Cambodia, often directly from archaeological sites, and sold them on the international art market.
• Latchford's case underscores the broader issue of cultural heritage trafficking and the efforts by international authorities to combat it. His indictment and the subsequent legal actions highlight the importance of preserving cultural heritage and the need for stringent measures against illegal trafficking.

2011 – 2012 – Jersey trusts, BVI trustees, and Jersey bank accounts

• Douglas Latchford hired Trident Trust, a specialist offshore finances company, in 2011, after the U.S. government stopped the Sotheby’s auction of a looted Cambodian statue he had previously sold.
• Latchford formed two trusts in Jersey, both named after Hindu gods: the Skanda Trust in 2011 and the Siva Trust in 2012.
• One of the beneficiaries of the trusts was Latchford's daughter, Julia.
• The trustee for these entities was a private trust company registered in the British Virgin Islands (BVI), providing an additional layer of privacy.
• the Skanda Trust had accounts in other IFCs, including with Rathbones, a wealth management firm in Jersey, where very considerable amounts of money were held and invested.

SAR IN 2016

• In 2016, following the Wiener indictment, Douglas Latchford’s investments, said to include the Rathbones account, are understood to have been subject to a suspicious activity report in Jersey, which enables suspected money laundering to be reported to relevant authorities.
• The Wiener indictment refers to the legal actions taken against individuals involved in the illegal trade of cultural artifacts. In this context, Wiener was another individual who pleaded guilty to purchasing looted artifacts from Latchford and selling them with false provenance.
• The Wiener indictment refers to the legal actions taken against Nancy Wiener, a prominent Manhattan gallery operator.
• In 2016, Wiener was indicted in New York for allegedly selling millions of dollars’ worth of looted antiquities from countries such as Afghanistan, Thailand, Cambodia, and India through her gallery. She was charged with conspiracy and other related offenses for her role in trafficking these artifacts.
• Douglas Latchford was indeed mentioned in connection with the Wiener indictment. The indictment highlighted how Wiener and Latchford collaborated in the illegal trade of cultural heritage items, often using falsified provenance documents to disguise the origins of the looted artefacts.

2021

• In early-2021, Julia agreed to donate to Cambodia her entire collection of 125 antiquities from the country's Khmer period that she had inherited when her father died.
• The Cambodian government responded magnanimously to Julia Latchford’s promise of returning her father's antiquities, with Cambodia’s culture minister, Phoeurng Sackona, describing her as “precious and selfless and beautiful”.
• However, Julia acknowledged that law enforcement authorities were continuing to investigate her father’s estate, which she inherited, for proceeds of crime at the time.
• Julia maintained that she was not personally subject to any investigation and had not been involved in the sales of antiquities while they were part of the Skanda and Siva trust structure.
• She spoke.
• That her father had given her “credible” assurance that the allegations against him were false, adding that she was reassured by the “close relationship” Douglas Latchford still had then with museums and the Cambodian authorities, and the fact that major European auction houses continued to sell Khmer antiquities.
• Julia admitted.
• “I now know from recent research into [my father's] affairs, and becoming aware of information not available to us at the time (including the findings of law enforcement bodies) that in general and in particular cases, he lied to me, and concealed certain actions from me,”
• She began to hold independent discussions with the Cambodian government from 2017, she said, and her promise to return all the antiquities is understood to have been part of a formal agreement she signed with Phnom Penh shortly after her father died.
• Julia also agreed to hand over his full documentation, said to include an inventory of his sales and extensive wider evidence of the global trade in Khmer antiquities.

JULY 2023 - SHOW ME THE MONEY

• Julia agreed to turn over a seventh-century bronze statue from Vietnam that the federal authorities said had been bought by Latchford with illegally obtained funds. And since Julia's agreement with the Cambodian government to give back the looted relics in 2021, negotiations have been ongoing over Latchford’s financial accounts.
• Julia had agreed to forfeit $12 million from Latchford's estate as part of a settlement to end the civil case that accused her father of profiting from the sale of stolen Cambodian artefacts.
• US officials said Latchford maintained bank accounts in Jersey, the UK, and America, and that he transferred at least $12 million in tainted proceeds to his bank accounts in Jersey.
• The officials said that the disposition of the funds once they are received will be decided later by the U.S. Justice Department.
• Following the death of Mr Latchford, the proceedings were brought under the Civil Asset Recovery (International Co-Operation) (Jersey) Law 2007, which Mr Temple called a "powerful additional weapon for Jersey in the fight against international financial crime and money-laundering".
• Jersey's Attorney General Mark Temple KC said.
• That the Economic Crime and Confiscation Unit in the Law Officers’ Department and the Jersey Financial Intelligence Unit worked "in close partnership" with the US Department of Justice in this "important case".
• The Royal Court agreed to freeze the assets following an investigation into a scheme by the late Douglas Latchford, a disgraced art dealer, to sell stolen Cambodian antiquities in the USA and elsewhere.
• $12 million held by Jersey finance institutions have been frozen in what has been described as the "largest ever" forfeiture of proceeds from the sale of stolen antiquities... 

2024 - CAMBODIA CELEBRATES RETURN OF DOZENS OF KHMER TREASURES FROM THE MET AND OTHER COLLECTIONS

• The spate of repatriations followed extensive efforts to trace and recover looted ancient artifacts, including some identified by ICIJ and linked to disgraced art dealer Douglas Latchford.
• Two of the heads that belonged to the private collection of the Lindemann Family on display during a repatriation ceremony in August 2024 at the Peace Palace in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.
• After a decades-long journey through the hands of art smugglers, dealers, and collectors — including billionaires and North America’s largest museum — dozens of ancient Khmer objects have been returned home to Cambodia.
• On Thursday, the country’s prime minister led a ceremony to celebrate the repatriation of 70 artifacts that were stolen during years of bloody civil war and later transferred to Western art institutions and private collectors.
• In a statement, the Cambodian Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts described the return of the artifacts as akin to the return of “Khmer ancestors’ souls.”
• The ceremony marked a milestone in Cambodia’s yearslong effort to trace and recover looted cultural treasures, including many tied to Douglas Latchford, an accused antiquities trafficker linked to hundreds of artifacts taken from sacred sites around Southeast Asia. The recent repatriations were secured through a range of processes including seizures by U.S. law enforcement, voluntary returns, and legal proceedings, according to the Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts. In several cases the artifacts were held by high-profile collectors, such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art and two billionaires: Jim Clark, the founder of Netscape, and late businessman George Lindemann, then his family.
• A 2022 investigation by ICIJ, the Washington Post and Finance Uncovered identified several missing Khmer objects from Cambodia’s most-wanted list featured in magazine photoshoots of mansions owned by the Lindemann family. A photograph in a 2021 edition of Architectural Digest showed the lush courtyard inside the San Francisco home of Lindemann’s daughter, Sloan Lindemann Barnett, and her husband, Roger Barnett, with several empty pedestals.
• ICIJ found that the pedestals were not in fact empty A set of ancient stone heads had been edited out of the photo. Those stone heads have now returned to Cambodia, according to the Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts.
• The Lindemann antiquities collection was previously described as “one of the greatest collections of Southeast Asian art in private hands.” But investigations by ICIJ and its reporting partners showed that some of the 10th to 12th-century statues — which had adorned mansions in Florida and California — were likely stolen from Cambodia and smuggled to the U.S. with the help of Douglas Latchford.
• Last year, the Lindemann family signed an agreement with federal prosecutors in New York stating that the family would voluntarily return the pieces and would not face criminal charges.
• Among the objects previously held by the Lindemann family and recently returned to Cambodia is a larger-than-life-sized statue of Dhrishtadyumna — a mythic warrior — stolen from a temple in Koh Ker, an ancient city known for its sandstone statues.
• For years, Dhrishtadyumna’s original pedestal, which the statue had been ripped from decades ago, sat empty at the National Museum of Cambodia. Now the two parts have been reunited as the museum’s staff assess how best to rejoin the two pieces, a Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts official confirmed.
• Bradley J. Gordon, a legal advisor to the Cambodian arts ministry told ICIJ.
• “Every time I visit the artifacts with experts and members of the museum over the last few weeks, there are new revelations, especially as many were kept in mansions in the United States for several decades,”
• “It is truly an exciting time for anyone interested in the history of Angkor and earlier kingdoms of Cambodia and promises a new era of research on Cambodia’s past.”
• Latchford was indicted in 2019 by U.S. federal prosecutors, who accused him of playing a leading role in a massive looting of Cambodia over more than a decade. Latchford died in 2020. Last year, his estate agreed to pay $12 million and return a 7th-century bronze statue in a record forfeiture. In 2022, Clark, the Netscape cofounder, agreed to return 35 relics from his private collection. All had passed through Latchford’s hands.
• At least 14 of the newly returned pieces to Cambodia were previously held by New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, which has had extensive dealings with Latchford and other accused antiquities smugglers. Last year, ICIJ reported that the museum’s catalogue contained at least 1,109 pieces previously owned by people who had been either indicted or convicted of antiquities crimes.
• Later that year, the Met signed an agreement with US federal prosecutors to return 16 ancient Khmer statues to Cambodia and Thailand that were linked to illicit antiquities trafficking.

AUGUST 2024

• The statues have since been transferred to their permanent home in the national museum.
• The Ministry of Culture and Fine Art said.
• “The Cambodian people are proud and filled with joy for the return of these national treasures representing our ancestral souls and identity, under the umbrella of peace and development,”

Source

• https://www.icij.org/investigations/hidden-treasures/cambodia-celebrates-return-of-dozens-of-khmer-treasures-from-the-met-and-other-collections/?utm_content=buffer363d7&utm_medium=social&utm_source=LinkedIn+&utm_campaign=Buffer+-+LInkedIn
•  https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/editorials/archives/2021/10/09/2003765777
• Southern District of New York | Antiquities Dealer Charged With .... https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/antiquities-dealer-charged-trafficking-looted-cambodian-artifacts.
• Who was Douglas Latchford? Indicted art dealer accused of selling .... https://www.denverpost.com/2022/12/01/who-is-douglas-latchford-asian-khmer-art-smuggler/.
• $12M settlement announced of civil forfeiture action against .... https://www.ice.gov/news/releases/12m-settlement-announced-civil-forfeiture-action-against-antiquities-trafficker.
• A notorious dealer used trusts to hoard looted Khmer treasures. https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/editorials/archives/2021/10/09/2003765777.
• Daughter of art dealer accused of smuggling pledges to return entire .... https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-02-16/daughter-of-art-dealer-returning-cambodian-artifacts-latchford/13158018.
• Mystery company ties accused temple raiders to art world elite. https://bing.com/search?q=Wiener+indictment.
• Antiquities Dealer Nancy Wiener Pleads Guilty to Charges of ... - Observer. https://observer.com/2021/10/antiquities-dealer-nancy-wiener-has-pled-guilty-to-charges-of-conspiracy/.
• Recent Guilty Pleas Highlight Illegal Control of Medical Practices .... https://www.rivkinradler.com/publications/recent-guilty-pleas-highlight-illegal-control-of-medical-practices-kickbacks-for-patient-referrals/.
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• Anthony Weiner sentenced to nearly two years in prison for sexting scandal. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/anthony-weiner-sentenced-nearly-two-years-prison-sexting-scandal-n803906.