Claims of Looting Shadow Expert in Khmer Art

BANGKOK — For decades Douglas A. J. Latchford, an 81-year-old British art collector, has built a reputation as one of the world’s great experts in Khmer antiquities, one whose generous return of treasures to Cambodia garnered him knighthood there in 2008.

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U.S. Attorney's Office, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

The 10th-century sandstone statue, known as the Duryodhana.

Tang Chhin Sothy/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Douglas A. J. Latchford in 2009.

But last month Mr. Latchford, who lives here in an apartment brimming with Asian artifacts, was depicted less chivalrously in a civil complaint filed by the United States attorney’s office in Manhattan.

The federal lawyers said Mr. Latchford, identified in court papers only as “the Collector,” bought a 10th-century Khmer warrior statue in the early 1970s knowing that it had been looted from a jungle temple during the Cambodian civil war.

The lawyers are trying to help Cambodia recover the artwork, a 500-pound sandstone statue, which Sotheby’s in New York still hopes to sell for millions of dollars on behalf of its current owner.

For Sotheby’s and the federal government the court case is the latest pitched battle over what is fair and appropriate when regulating the sale of global antiquities.

For Mr. Latchford, who denies ever having owned the work, the case has brought unwelcome attention to a long career in the tangled world of antiquities collecting, where the tenets of private property, cultural preservation and national patrimony often clash.

“If the French and other Western collectors had not preserved this art, what would be the understanding of Khmer culture today?” he asked in an interview.

Mr. Latchford, well known here as a bodybuilding impresario who runs national competitions, has spent more than 55 years amassing one of the world’s finest collections of Cambodian antiquities, many of which once decorated his second home in London. He has donated many others to institutions, including the National Museum in Phnom Penh and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Experts cite his three books on Khmer treasures, written with the scholar Emma C. Bunker, as crucial reference works.

“His gifts are very important because these artifacts teach the Cambodian people about their history,” said Hab Touch, the Cambodian government director-general of the Department General of Cultural Affairs. “We hope his generosity will set a good example for others.”

The United States government lawyers, though, said his conduct regarding the Sotheby’s statue, known as the Duryodhana, was less praiseworthy. Its pedestal and feet were found in the ground in 2007 at a sacked temple site called Koh Ker, and in court papers the lawyers assert that Mr. Latchford (who acknowledges he is the unnamed collector in their complaint) bought the statue from a Thai dealer who, they say, had gotten it from an organized looting network.

They say Mr. Latchford then helped to get the sculpture into Britain by assisting with export licenses that were meant to conceal what was actually being shipped.

The London auction house Spink & Son sold the statue in 1975 to a Belgian man whose widow is the current owner. She approached Sotheby’s to sell it in 2010, but the sale was suspended when the Cambodian government objected. Sotheby’s is fighting the United States government’s effort to seize the statue on Cambodia’s behalf, arguing in court that there is no evidence that the statue was looted or is the property of the Cambodian government.

It is not clear from the court papers what evidence the government has to support its depiction of Mr. Latchford, who is not a defendant in the case. The United States attorney’s office declined a request for an interview.

Mr. Latchford said that the government lawyers, desperate to seize a high-profile antiquity, were “weaving together suppositions” to inflate his role. “This is somebody’s imagination working overtime,” he said.

He said he had once hoped to own the statue, which he said he did not believe was looted, and that a Spink representative in Bangkok had purchased it on his recommendation from the unidentified Thai dealer. But he said he had never bought it. He acknowledged that, as a matter of record keeping, Spink appears to have listed it under his name in its files.

Internal Sotheby’s documents appear to back up his recollection. In one 2010 e-mail Mr. Latchford told a Sotheby’s official that he had once owned the statue, but he corrected himself a few weeks later, long before the sale of the statue had become an issue for Cambodian officials or American lawyers. “I have checked my records and notice that I had the guardian figure on reserve from Spink’s in 1970 but never actually bought it,” he wrote.

Mr. Latchford similarly denied any role in procuring export licenses. “I never conspired with anyone,” he said.

Ralph Blumenthal contributed reporting from New York.

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