A New York gallery handed over 20 valuable ancient artifacts linked to Douglas AJ Latchford, an art dealer accused of trafficking in items looted from Cambodia, according to court documents filed last week.
The stone and bronze articles, dating from the 2nd century BC. C. to the 13th century AD. C., include representations of Khmer deities and mythical figures carved in sandstone and bronze ceremonial objects. They were acquired from Mr. Latchford by the gallery between 1995 and 2005, according to a forfeiture complaint filed in the Southern District of New York on June 25.
Investigators said the gallery had decided to hand them over after the Department of Homeland Security approached them with evidence that the objects had been illegally looted from Cambodia. Mr. Latchford, according to the document, had provided the gallery with false provenance documents.
Homeland Security Investigations took custody of the objects in 2022 and 2023, but paperwork filed in court on June 25 completed the seizure before the items were returned to Cambodia. Court documents credited the gallery for voluntarily handing over artifacts it had purchased from the dealer after learning more about Mr. Latchford's activities and the history of the items.
Latchford, long considered a scholar of Khmer sculpture who provided many museums and collectors with ancient artifacts from Cambodia, was indicted by federal prosecutors in New York in 2019, a year before he died. He was accused, in court documents, of trafficking in looted Cambodian relics and forging documents, and was said to have “built a career on the smuggling and illicit sale of priceless Cambodian antiquities, often directly from archaeological sites.” The charge was dismissed a year after Latchford's death at age 88.
The gallery does not appear in the court document. But the Cambodian government identified it as Antiquarium Fine Ancient Arts Gallery, a gallery on Madison Avenue in Manhattan. The gallery did not respond to requests for comment.
One of the statues is a 10th-century depiction of a Kinnari, a mythological figure that has attributes of both a bird and a woman.
In the case of this artifact, Latchford sent the gallery a false invoice that identified the country of origin as Thailand. In US Customs documents, it was described as a stone figure of a female bird. In fact, according to court documents, it is “a well-known artifact from the Prasat Krachap temple in the ancient archaeological complex of Koh Ker in Cambodia.”
Bradley J. Gordon, the lawyer handling recoveries for the Cambodian government, said the piece was considered a “national treasure.” He said archaeologists had found the broken base of the sculpture still in place at the remote temple.
Gordon, who has worked with U.S. law enforcement agencies to recover hundreds of looted Cambodian and Khmer artifacts over the past decade, said the paper trail that led to the Manhattan gallery had begun on Latchford's computer, which was seized by Cambodian investigators years ago.
Among the documents was an appraisal of items Mr Latchford had provided to the gallery. With such evidence, Gordon said, Cambodian officials had approached federal prosecutors in Manhattan, seeking help in securing the return of artifacts thought to have been looted, he said, and were grateful for the officials' diligence in pursuing the matter.
In a 2007 appraisal, Mr. Latchford had valued the Kinnari sculpture at more than $400,000.
