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He died in 2020, at age 88, before a trial could be held. government in 2019 charged with trafficking looted antiquities. Two of three glossy books co-written by Douglas Latchford, a longtime expert in Cambodian antiquities whom the U.S. It was a genuine obsession, friends said. In 2008, he was granted the equivalent of a knighthood by the deputy prime minister of Cambodia for his donations to the country’s national museum. He donated Khmer relics to museums around the world and boasted of selling to the Rockefellers. Prominent art institutions and galleries called on him to identify Khmer acquisitions. Bunker, a professor of Asian art history, he wrote three books on Khmer antiquities. He was about 26 when he bought his first Khmer relic - a 24-inch sandstone statue of a female torso - for $700 in an area of Bangkok known as “Thieves Market.” It had no feet or arms, but Latchford was smitten, he said in an interview with the Bangkok Post. The passion that would define his life, however, lay elsewhere. He was a frequent guest at the lavish dinner parties of Bangkok’s elite.
He also became an aficionado of bodybuilding, starting a gym and training champions from Thailand and Cambodia. These businesses, he would later claim, were the primary sources of his wealth. “Almost immediately,” Latchford wrote, “we found ourselves in the depths of the jungle walking along narrow overgrown paths flanked by ‘skull and crossbones’ on a red background, warning us of land mines.”Īs a child, Latchford, who was born in Mumbai to a British banker and his wife in 1931, was fascinated by tales of abandoned temples in Rudyard Kipling’s “The Jungle Book,” he told interviewers.īy age 20, he had moved to Bangkok, the capital of Thailand, where he founded a pharmaceutical and manufacturing distribution company and invested in land, he told interviewers. In the article, Latchford detailed the dangers of exploring ancient Khmer temples in a landscape still bearing the marks of warfare. “Early in 2002, a small group of intrepid adventurers … boarded a helicopter and headed to northeastern Cambodia to the fabled city of Lingapura, the grandiose Khmer capital begun by Jayavarman IV in AD 921,” Latchford wrote in Arts of Asia magazine about one of his excursions. (Salwan Georges/The Washington Post) A genuine obsessionĮven among the exceptional personalities using offshore companies and trusts - the ultra-wealthy, compromised politicians or others seeking to elude authorities - Douglas Latchford stood out. The pieces are on display at the Cleveland Museum of Art in May and had been owned by Latchford. Two bronzes portray two Buddhist deities trampling personifications of afflictions. Neither she nor her husband has been accused of wrongdoing. The trusts were not used to obscure the origin of looted antiquities or the proceeds of their sale, it said. The collection included many items with well-documented ownership history, her statement said. In a statement, Julia Latchford said the trusts were “set up for legitimate tax and estate planning” and, in addition to the relics, “included multiple family assets” unrelated to Douglas Latchford’s art collection. Latchford had commenced,” the lawyers’ letters said. Planning for the Skanda and Siva trusts began “long before any investigations into Mr. It wasn’t until his death that she discovered he had concealed his dealings from her, the lawyers wrote.
In letters to The Post and the ICIJ, attorneys for Julia Latchford and her husband, Simon Copleston, said that until recently Julia had believed that her father’s collection had been acquired legally.
Many others were sold long ago, and neither those relics nor the financial proceeds from their sale will be part of any Latchford donation. The promised return covers only a portion of the relics Latchford handled. Last week, the first five relics arrived in Cambodia. This year, Latchford’s daughter, Julia Latchford, promised to return what remains of her father’s personal collection, including more than 100 bronze, sandstone, copper and gold antiquities. “Museum leaders have had more than enough time to do the right thing. “Accusations against Latchford … have been a matter of legal record for nearly 10 years now,” said Tess Davis, a lawyer, archaeologist and the executive director of the Antiquities Coalition, an organization that campaigns against the trafficking of cultural artifacts. Museums have been reluctant to return relics to their countries of origin, even items that displayed clear signs of looting, such as statues with severed feet.
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