Officials in the US have returned 27 artefacts to Cambodia and another three antiquities to Indonesia, the Manhattan District Attorney Alvin L. Bragg announced on Friday (26 April). The lion’s share of the restituted objects were returned to Cambodian officials in a ceremony on 19 April that was attended by the country’s ambassador to the US, Keo Chhea. A ceremony marking the return of the Indonesian artefacts was attended by Winanto Adi, Indonesia’s consul general in New York. The 30 repatriated objects are collectively valued at $3m, according to the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office.
The artefacts were all recovered as part of ongoing investigations by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office and Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) into international trafficking networks known to trade in antiquities from Southeast Asia. Among the works being returned are pieces linked to the alleged smuggler Subhash Kapoor and the convicted trafficker Nancy Wiener. One object, a bronze Shiva Triad, was smuggled out of Cambodia in the early 2000s at Wiener’s direction; but after she failed to find a buyer for it, she donated it to the Denver Art Museum in 2007. It was recovered from the institution by the Antiquities Trafficking Unit of the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office this past June. A stone relief sculpture being returned to Indonesia, dating from the Majapahit Empire (1293-1527), was recovered by authorities from a storage unit owned by Kapoor.
A stone relief sculpture dating from the Majapahit Empire (1293-1527) that was returned to Indonesian officials this month Courtesy the office of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin L. Bragg
“For years, these pieces were in the hands of people who saw nothing beyond the profit and status of their illicit possession,” Ivan J. Arvelo, the special agent in charge at HSI New York, said in a statement. “HSI New York’s Cultural Property, Art and Antiquities Group has worked tirelessly with international partners to take these small steps in seeking justice against some of the world’s most prolific traffickers.”
Since 2011, HSI and the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office have recovered more than 2,500 objects linked to Kapoor and his former gallery on Manhattan’s Madison Avenue, Art of the Past. In 2022, a court in India sentenced Kapoor to ten years in prison for his trafficking activities. In 2019, authorities in the US charged him with 86 criminal counts of grand larceny, possession of stolen property and conspiracy to defraud.
In 2021, Wiener pled guilty for her role in trafficking looted artefacts and selling them through her gallery to public and private collections around the world. Major institutions including the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney acquired works through Wiener and her mother, Doris Wiener, who died in 2011.
