Disgraced Seller’s Daughter to Forfeit $12M and Allegedly Smuggled Statue

The daughter of the infamous accused antiquities smuggler Douglas Latchford will hand over a Seventh-century Vietnamese statue and $12 million of her father’s cash in a settlement finalized yesterday, June 22 in the US Legal professional’s Workplace for the Southern District of New York. The settlement marks the most important forfeiture of looted antiquities earnings thus far.

Latchford spent almost a half-century systematically inserting stolen Southeast Asian objects into the fingers of artwork collectors and Western museums. In 2019, the US Legal professional’s Workplace for the Southern District of New York indicted Latchford for his prison operations in Cambodia. He died a 12 months later in 2020 on the age of 88. He lived primarily in Thailand, the place he died, and the UK.

Though Latchford operated illegally for many years, yesterday’s monumental settlement solely displays his American gross sales between 2003 and 2020. In these 17 years, Latchford remodeled $12 million promoting looted objects from Southeast Asia, most of which had been from Cambodia. He stashed that cash in financial institution accounts in New York, the UK, and Jersey, a self-governing island within the English Channel beneath the British Crown.

In 2021, Latchford’s daughter Julia Copleton agreed to return 125 of her late father’s objects to Cambodia. These artifacts had been valued at greater than $50 million. Now, Copleton has 90 days handy over the Seventh-century Vietnamese statue to the US Division of Homeland Safety outpost within the UK: Within the late 2000s, Latchford used a number of the earnings from his illicit trades to purchase the bronze sculpture, which depicts the Hindu goddess Durga.

In accordance with the civil criticism, Latchford visited Vietnam in 2008 after which advised a financial institution employee to wire $1.5 million to an unnamed particular person with a Vietnamese e-mail tackle. In early 2009, Latchford despatched a photograph of the not too long ago unearthed Durga statue to an American supplier (additionally unnamed) with the conspicuously suspicious topic line, “CONFIDENTIAL FOR YOUR EYES ONLY – NOT TO BE SHOWN TO ANYBODY.” A restorer who steadily labored with Latchford mentioned the bronze statue was corroded and displayed iron deposits, suggesting it was not too long ago excavated. Latchford printed a photograph of the statue in a 2011 guide and wrote that the sculpture was “beforehand unpublished.”

In 2011, Latchford tried to promote the Durga statue to an American collector. He mentioned the sculpture was from Cambodia, not Vietnam, and that the artifact had a provenance courting again to the Sixties. The collector didn’t purchase the looted work and the sculpture remained in Latchford’s private holdings.

Copleton has denied any wrongdoing and the US Legal professional’s Workplace for the Southern District of New York said that the monetary settlement doesn’t signify her guilt. The workplace additionally mentioned that yesterday’s settlement doesn’t imply the investigation into Latchford is completed.

Latchford didn’t fly beneath the radar as he spent many years plundering objects. In 2009, he even acquired an official honor from the Cambodian authorities after he returned six gold artifacts. In 2012, the US Legal professional’s Workplace for the Southern District of New York filed a civil criticism towards Latchford for his involvement within the 1975 theft of the Tenth-century Cambodian “Duryodhana” statue, which was actually knocked off at its ft. Latchford denied the costs. In 2014, that statue was repatriated. A 12 months earlier, the Metropolitan Museum of Artwork had returned two Latchford-linked Khmer sculptures to Cambodia.

Whereas admitting his prison actions, narrations of Latchford’s life printed as not too long ago as 2020 and 2021 favorably title him a “Khmer antiquities skilled” and “scholar,” even when Latchford’s hyperlinks to antiquities smuggling had been public for almost a decade and he had been formally charged.

The 2019 indictment, nonetheless, appeared to lastly open the floodgates into deeper investigations of Latchford’s looted objects within the collections of museums, together with these of The Met, the British Museum, and the Denver Museum of Artwork. The latter additionally dropped the title of donor and Latchford collaborator Emma Bunker earlier this 12 months. The USA has returned a few of these stolen antiquities to Cambodia.