New York justice announced Friday that it had returned to Cambodia and Indonesia 30 works of art worth three million dollars, looted, sold or transferred illegally by networks of American merchants and traffickers, including one convicted and imprisoned in India.
The New York prosecutor for Manhattan, Alvin Bragg, said in a press release that he had returned, during two ceremonies a few days ago, 27 pieces in Phnom Penh and three in Jakarta, including a bronze of the Hindu deity Shiva (“Triad Shiva”), looted in Cambodia, and a stone bas-relief from a 13th century empiree in the 16th centurye century, stolen in Indonesia.
Cambodian Ambassador Keo Chhea and Indonesian Consul General Adi praised the United States’ cooperation with their countries to “protect the soul of our common heritage.”
Prosecutor Bragg pointed the finger at art dealers Subhash Kapoor, an Indian-American, and American Nancy Wiener.
Mr. Kapoor, accused of having led a network trafficking stolen works in Southeast Asia to sell them in his Manhattan gallery, has been the target for more than a decade of an investigation by the American justice system called “Hidden Idol.”
Arrested in 2011 in Germany, returned to India where he has been imprisoned since, he was tried and sentenced in November 2022 to 13 years in prison.
Indicted in his absence in the United States in 2019 and claimed in New Delhi by the New York courts with others for “conspiracy to traffic in stolen works of art”, Mr. Kapoor denies the accusations against him.
“The extradition of Mr. Kapoor is pending,” assures Mr. Bragg, whose services found from 2011 to 2023 some 2,500 works from his network, valued at $143 million.
“We continue to investigate large-scale trafficking networks that target Southeast Asian antiquities. Although we have made progress and dismantled networks, there is certainly still a lot of work to do, acknowledged the prosecutor.
Nancy Wiener, convicted in 2021 for trafficking in stolen works of art, ended up donating the bronze of Shiva to the Museum of Arts in Denver (Colorado) in 2007, seized by the New York courts in 2023.
Since 2017, the Manhattan public prosecutor’s office has been leading an international campaign to return works of art.
Under the aegis of Prosecutor Bragg for more than two years, nearly 1,200 coins worth $250 million have been returned to 25 countries, including Cambodia, China, India, Pakistan, Egypt , Iraq, Greece, Turkey and Italy.
New York is a hub for this type of trafficking and several works have been seized in recent years from museums, including the prestigious Metropolitan Museum of Art (MET) and from private collectors.
