00:00:11.861 --> 00:00:16.241
To us Cambodians, the descendants
of the Khmer civilization,

00:00:17.075 --> 00:00:21.162
each of these artifacts
has special meaning.

00:00:25.166 --> 00:00:27.377
It’s a symbol of protection.

00:00:28.461 --> 00:00:31.506
They are symbols of unity.

00:00:35.301 --> 00:00:37.846
It's a symbol of our soul.

00:00:40.723 --> 00:00:48.523
Looting and illicit trafficking
is why our nation was broken.

00:01:00.952 --> 00:01:04.747
I don't think people realize
that there was such violence,

00:01:04.873 --> 00:01:09.335
that people died
because of taking those sculptures.

00:01:09.711 --> 00:01:13.631
These are bigger than just regular
run-of-the-mill cases.

00:01:13.715 --> 00:01:18.261
These artifacts, once they're gone,
they're gone forever.

00:01:25.059 --> 00:01:28.730
When I walk through a museum today
and I look at those statues,

00:01:28.813 --> 00:01:31.274
I just know that there's so much history

00:01:31.357 --> 00:01:35.069
that the people looking at those statues
don't want to know.

00:01:35.195 --> 00:01:36.821
They really don't want to know.

00:01:36.946 --> 00:01:40.700
If they know, they would go back
and ask for a refund.

00:01:40.825 --> 00:01:44.329
They'd say, why would you charge us
to see these blood antiquities?

00:01:44.412 --> 00:01:46.122
Why do you even have these here?

00:01:52.295 --> 00:01:55.340
People lost their life.

00:01:55.757 --> 00:01:59.594
People lost parts of their bodies,
their family members,

00:01:59.677 --> 00:02:02.096
trying to get those sculptures out.

00:02:05.433 --> 00:02:09.062
It was like they came for war.

00:02:09.062 --> 00:02:13.316
A driver was shot ...

00:02:13.316 --> 00:02:18.863
He screamed for help but bullets were flying
everywhere, no one dared to go to him.

00:02:20.031 --> 00:02:22.116
I've been to many archaeological sites.

00:02:22.200 --> 00:02:25.578
I've never seen one absolutely
completely plundered.

00:02:25.745 --> 00:02:29.791
In a very short time period,
they fell victim to war profiteers,

00:02:29.874 --> 00:02:31.584
they fell victim to greed.

00:02:33.336 --> 00:02:36.005
It would seem
that it was highly organized

00:02:36.089 --> 00:02:40.802
by people who had finances
and the power.

00:02:41.219 --> 00:02:43.763
It had to be someone in authority.

00:02:44.097 --> 00:02:46.933
The networks behind them
were very advanced,

00:02:47.016 --> 00:02:49.143
the smuggling routes were complicated.

00:02:49.227 --> 00:02:51.229
These are difficult investigations.

00:02:52.939 --> 00:02:56.734
The illicit trade in art and antiquities
is funding organized crime,

00:02:56.818 --> 00:02:58.653
it's funding violent extremism.

00:02:59.153 --> 00:03:02.073
Death threats,
calls in the morning at 3 o'clock.

00:03:02.156 --> 00:03:04.158
People have families, they've got kids.

00:03:04.325 --> 00:03:06.494
You don't put that stuff at risk.

00:03:07.453 --> 00:03:09.914
This belongs to the temple here,

00:03:09.998 --> 00:03:14.711
but now it's in Thailand,
it's in the US, it's in the UK.

00:03:14.752 --> 00:03:16.254
We were afraid,

00:03:16.337 --> 00:03:21.134
but on the other hand, you want
so badly to get the sculpture back...

00:03:21.634 --> 00:03:22.885
...home.

00:03:35.148 --> 00:03:39.694
My daughter and my bodybuilder chef
talked to two priests,

00:03:39.777 --> 00:03:42.030
independent of one another.

00:03:42.113 --> 00:03:45.616
Both of the priests indicated
that in some previous life,

00:03:45.700 --> 00:03:47.535
I was Khmer,

00:03:47.618 --> 00:03:52.332
and that what I collect
had once belonged to me.

00:03:53.458 --> 00:04:01.507
In 1997, Mr. Douglas Latchford requested
me to take him to Banteay Srei.

00:04:01.591 --> 00:04:04.969
But I said, "No, dear sir,
it is impossible."

00:04:05.762 --> 00:04:10.933
"I know, but I will hire the guards."

00:04:12.560 --> 00:04:15.730
"Really? I do not know, sir.
I do not know."

00:04:15.855 --> 00:04:19.734
Mr. Douglas said,
"No, I really want to go."

00:04:20.068 --> 00:04:22.779
He's very persistent, so much.

00:04:22.904 --> 00:04:28.034
My family was poor
and I lost my father.

00:04:28.368 --> 00:04:30.661
And I was very afraid.

00:04:32.080 --> 00:04:37.585
He took a helicopter to Koh Ker
with six people.

00:04:38.628 --> 00:04:43.674
It was my first time
to go by helicopter.

00:04:43.800 --> 00:04:46.511
When they landed down, I vomited

00:04:47.428 --> 00:04:50.264
because of the shaking.

00:04:52.850 --> 00:04:58.272
We were very scared to walk
from the rice fields to the temple

00:04:58.773 --> 00:05:01.734
because we were afraid of landmines.

00:05:01.818 --> 00:05:07.532
We saw the signs with the skulls
and two crosses underneath.

00:05:07.698 --> 00:05:10.785
I asked the guard to go first.

00:05:10.868 --> 00:05:16.374
So then, the guard decided
to burn the rice stalks and the thatch

00:05:16.457 --> 00:05:18.376
to get a way to the temple.

00:05:18.668 --> 00:05:22.213
And then, one landmine exploded.

00:05:25.174 --> 00:05:28.302
And then I said
he had a very special camera.

00:05:28.386 --> 00:05:30.680
He had a zoom to take the picture.

00:05:37.145 --> 00:05:41.566
When I saw the beautiful sculptures,
I called, "Dear sir, come here!"

00:05:41.983 --> 00:05:45.194
"Oh, good."
He took the picture.

00:05:52.368 --> 00:05:55.371
He would take people like the Lindemanns,
who were these billionaires,

00:05:55.455 --> 00:05:57.665
Martin Lerner, who at the time was
the curator

00:05:57.748 --> 00:05:59.208
of the Metropolitan Museum of Art,

00:05:59.292 --> 00:06:00.793
to these remote jungle sites.

00:06:00.877 --> 00:06:02.420
It must have been very exciting.

00:06:02.503 --> 00:06:04.839
And having someone
like Latchford show them around

00:06:04.922 --> 00:06:07.258
and have so much knowledge
about all of these items,

00:06:07.341 --> 00:06:10.219
I'm sure he was very entertaining.

00:06:14.182 --> 00:06:16.559
There was a British stone conservator.

00:06:16.642 --> 00:06:19.061
Simon Warrack is his name.

00:06:19.187 --> 00:06:21.981
He had been working
at this beautiful site of Koh Ker,

00:06:22.064 --> 00:06:24.859
which used to be the capital
of the Khmer Empire.

00:06:27.236 --> 00:06:30.281
The statues there are very, very distinct
and very different.

00:06:30.364 --> 00:06:34.869
This is the site of this beautiful piece
that they called the Duryodhana.

00:06:34.952 --> 00:06:39.540
And he spotted two pieces
of stone on the ground.

00:06:39.665 --> 00:06:44.378
These blocks just had the feet attached,
and the body was nowhere in sight.

00:06:44.462 --> 00:06:50.968
This is pretty much where they were
when we saw the feet the first time.

00:06:52.011 --> 00:06:55.181
And since then,
they've excavated this trench.

00:06:56.599 --> 00:07:00.144
He happened to be in a library,
and he saw a statue.

00:07:00.228 --> 00:07:02.188
He could see
by the position of the legs,

00:07:02.271 --> 00:07:05.650
he said, "This kind of looks like
it might fit one of those pedestals."

00:07:05.775 --> 00:07:10.571
And sure enough, he lined them up
and he said, "I think this is matching."

00:07:11.656 --> 00:07:15.284
A few years later, Eric Bourdonneau,
a French researcher,

00:07:15.368 --> 00:07:17.328
he was able to do computer modelling

00:07:17.411 --> 00:07:20.831
to show that that statue
in Adoration and Glory,

00:07:20.915 --> 00:07:22.875
said to be owned
by a private collection,

00:07:23.000 --> 00:07:25.962
was the statue
that matched the pedestal.

00:07:26.420 --> 00:07:31.676
In 2010, this Belgian widow decided
she wanted to sell the Duryodhana statue

00:07:31.801 --> 00:07:34.345
that her husband had acquired.

00:07:34.470 --> 00:07:36.097
She reached out to Sotheby's,

00:07:36.180 --> 00:07:38.558
which is obviously
a very elite auction house,

00:07:38.683 --> 00:07:41.352
and said, "Look,
I really want to sell this."

00:07:41.435 --> 00:07:45.898
Sotheby's put that statue on the cover
of its auction

00:07:45.982 --> 00:07:48.317
of South and Southeast Asian art

00:07:48.401 --> 00:07:52.738
for an estimated value
of $2 to $3 million.

00:07:55.908 --> 00:08:00.580
Cambodia then sent a letter
to Sotheby's saying,

00:08:00.705 --> 00:08:03.291
"Don't sell it
because the feet are found."

00:08:03.416 --> 00:08:05.459
"This statue belongs
to Cambodia."

00:08:05.585 --> 00:08:08.379
Within hours to spare,
this auction was stopped.

00:08:11.257 --> 00:08:13.676
U.S. authorities said,
"Look, this is looted.

00:08:13.759 --> 00:08:15.261
"We want to return it to Cambodia."

00:08:15.386 --> 00:08:17.179
Sotheby's said, "No, no, no, no,
we want to sell it,

00:08:17.263 --> 00:08:18.347
"and we have the right to sell it."

00:08:18.472 --> 00:08:20.975
And so they, in the search
for the provenance,

00:08:21.058 --> 00:08:22.643
reached out to Emma Bunker,

00:08:22.727 --> 00:08:25.438
who also was a very close friend
of Douglas Latchford's.

00:08:25.563 --> 00:08:28.941
A lot of the emails between Emma Bunker
and Douglas Latchford

00:08:29.025 --> 00:08:30.401
were very illuminating.

00:08:30.484 --> 00:08:33.487
It was clear that he definitely was
the first owner,

00:08:33.571 --> 00:08:35.573
because they were then trying
to cover for him.

00:08:36.240 --> 00:08:40.077
I think that made him
a person of interest.

00:08:48.628 --> 00:08:53.758
I don't know where they imagined
that I owned the piece,

00:08:53.841 --> 00:08:59.013
but let me confirm to you first
that I did not own the piece.

00:09:00.473 --> 00:09:02.642
I had nothing to do with it.

00:09:05.019 --> 00:09:07.647
So the Pandora Papers was this cache

00:09:07.730 --> 00:09:10.733
of nearly 12 million financial documents

00:09:10.816 --> 00:09:13.194
from offshore secrecy havens

00:09:13.277 --> 00:09:17.156
that showed basically
how wealthy people

00:09:17.239 --> 00:09:20.576
and also sometimes criminals
conceal their assets.

00:09:20.785 --> 00:09:26.332
With the art market in general,
you have items worth millions of dollars

00:09:26.415 --> 00:09:29.210
that are being sold
in a very non-transparent way,

00:09:29.335 --> 00:09:31.796
that are changing hands
often across international borders.

00:09:31.921 --> 00:09:33.964
I ended up working on the Latchford one

00:09:34.048 --> 00:09:37.885
and so I was basically going through
every single document I could find.

00:09:37.968 --> 00:09:40.680
Shortly after the Sotheby's suit,

00:09:40.805 --> 00:09:44.392
the Latchfords turned to Trident Trust,
which was this offshore service provider.

00:09:44.892 --> 00:09:48.688
We were able to see that this guy
Latchford is pretty interesting.

00:09:48.979 --> 00:09:51.774
Where did the antiquities go?
And where did the money go?

00:09:51.857 --> 00:09:54.235
We were trying to track
both of those things.

00:09:54.318 --> 00:09:58.364
What interested us was, about three months
after the sale was actually stopped

00:09:58.447 --> 00:10:01.367
is when you saw the Skanda Trust
being formed.

00:10:01.492 --> 00:10:04.995
-So I mean, it could be coincidence.
-Certainly not a coincidence!

00:10:05.079 --> 00:10:08.374
Start scrolling away some of the artifacts
into a trust...

00:10:08.457 --> 00:10:11.585
Right, and also
some of the finances too,

00:10:11.711 --> 00:10:13.879
because that's a lot of money.

00:10:18.926 --> 00:10:22.638
Anytime I would see a story
about law enforcement or crime,

00:10:22.763 --> 00:10:24.849
but in particular the federal agents,

00:10:24.932 --> 00:10:27.560
I just knew that's what
I needed to be doing.

00:10:27.643 --> 00:10:30.312
It was like a calling:
"That's what I'm going to do."

00:10:30.438 --> 00:10:35.443
Narcotics investigations,
money launderers, fraudulent passports.

00:10:35.568 --> 00:10:38.821
Over the years I had done
all of those types of cases.

00:10:39.155 --> 00:10:43.534
I hear rumblings
of an agent in our office

00:10:43.617 --> 00:10:46.620
who's recovering ancient artifacts,
so I sought him out.

00:10:46.704 --> 00:10:49.832
He told me he was drowning in cases
and could really use the help.

00:10:49.957 --> 00:10:52.668
There's been no looking back
ever since.

00:10:52.793 --> 00:10:54.754
It's been a wild ride.

00:10:56.297 --> 00:10:58.841
Whenever we start an antiquities case,

00:10:58.924 --> 00:11:00.926
we approach it from two aspects.

00:11:01.051 --> 00:11:03.471
Can we prove that the piece is dirty?

00:11:03.554 --> 00:11:07.266
And then, can we prove
that someone committed a crime?

00:11:07.391 --> 00:11:10.978
Did someone knowingly smuggle
something illicit?

00:11:11.395 --> 00:11:16.108
Two aspects: the piece itself,
and then whether someone broke the law.

00:11:16.275 --> 00:11:19.945
I knew Latchford was dirty
from the Duryodhana case

00:11:20.070 --> 00:11:23.115
and seeing pieces that his name
was associated with.

00:11:23.240 --> 00:11:29.163
What I was trying to figure out is
how involved, how dirty was Latchford?

00:11:29.538 --> 00:11:34.168
In 2016, I led Operation Indochina
Peninsula Plunder,

00:11:34.251 --> 00:11:38.881
which was the investigation
into Douglas Latchford and his network.

00:11:39.006 --> 00:11:41.050
If you're going to allege

00:11:41.133 --> 00:11:44.929
that a particular artifact
originates in a certain temple,

00:11:45.012 --> 00:11:49.600
who's going to know that better
than people there on the ground?

00:11:58.234 --> 00:12:03.030
It starts with a passion
and a curiosity.

00:12:04.323 --> 00:12:07.493
I am Than Thanaren,

00:12:07.576 --> 00:12:12.164
a researcher working
on the investigation in Cambodia.

00:12:12.623 --> 00:12:15.584
I'm born in Cambodia,
I grew up in Cambodia.

00:12:15.709 --> 00:12:18.712
I heard about the Koh Ker temple,

00:12:18.796 --> 00:12:21.757
but I'd never been there
before the project.

00:12:21.757 --> 00:12:23.717
My name is Bradley Gordon.

00:12:23.843 --> 00:12:26.053
I'm officially appointed to advise
the ministry

00:12:26.136 --> 00:12:29.139
on repatriations
of stolen antiquities.

00:12:29.348 --> 00:12:31.517
I've met a lot of lawyers in my life,

00:12:31.642 --> 00:12:34.478
but he's just more like
an adventure lawyer.

00:12:34.478 --> 00:12:37.523
I walk into a museum, I feel like,

00:12:37.606 --> 00:12:41.318
do they have my picture
behind somewhere?

00:12:41.777 --> 00:12:44.321
"Brad Gordon,
don't let this guy in!"

00:12:45.281 --> 00:12:49.159
He's a kind of a sweetheart,
a sensitive person.

00:12:49.285 --> 00:12:52.162
Yeah, I think Brad
is more Cambodian than me.

00:12:53.289 --> 00:12:57.209
In 2012, he comes into my office.

00:12:57.293 --> 00:13:01.130
"We've got something huge
and very important for Cambodia."

00:13:01.213 --> 00:13:03.713
I was so... "Just spit it out."

00:13:03.716 --> 00:13:08.470
The DOJ said to me, "We're working
on a case involving Sotheby's."

00:13:08.888 --> 00:13:10.764
"You know about Latchford, right?"

00:13:10.890 --> 00:13:13.100
I went to the Cambodian government
and said,

00:13:13.183 --> 00:13:16.186
"Look, there's someone out there,
you should get back his collection."

00:13:16.770 --> 00:13:19.440
When I hear it, I just say,
"Wow."

00:13:19.523 --> 00:13:24.069
It's huge and so important
for me as a Cambodian,

00:13:24.153 --> 00:13:25.821
and also for Cambodia.

00:13:25.905 --> 00:13:27.948
If you look at Cambodia,

00:13:28.032 --> 00:13:31.785
and you're considering the number
of temples that these guys raided,

00:13:31.869 --> 00:13:35.164
the number of crime sites,
the number of statues,

00:13:35.247 --> 00:13:38.000
it's an enormous amount.

00:13:48.594 --> 00:13:52.640
We were hired
to find the looting network.

00:13:52.765 --> 00:13:56.310
Our assignment was to come up here

00:13:56.435 --> 00:13:59.605
and track down villagers,
track down witnesses.

00:14:00.189 --> 00:14:03.859
With Naren, the two of us
went over the country

00:14:04.026 --> 00:14:07.988
and we interviewed many, many people.

00:14:18.582 --> 00:14:21.335
We leave very early in the morning,
around 6 AM,

00:14:21.835 --> 00:14:23.420
on National 6,

00:14:23.545 --> 00:14:26.966
and after that, we keep going
in the direction of Siem Reap.

00:14:27.049 --> 00:14:29.176
Before Siem Reap, we have to turn right.

00:14:29.760 --> 00:14:32.429
It's about six hours
to get through this part

00:14:32.513 --> 00:14:35.015
because there were no roads.

00:14:36.892 --> 00:14:42.231
In the beginning, I didn't quite know
where Latchford fit into the picture.

00:14:48.654 --> 00:14:51.240
We arrived
almost as the sun goes down.

00:14:53.158 --> 00:14:57.287
Opening up,
there were a lot of temples everywhere.

00:15:09.008 --> 00:15:12.636
At the beginning, when we go there,
we were not that welcome.

00:15:13.262 --> 00:15:17.182
Because they don't understand
what we are doing there.

00:15:17.266 --> 00:15:21.353
We try to catch some guy?
Some smuggler?

00:15:23.439 --> 00:15:25.566
People were terrified, they were afraid.

00:15:25.649 --> 00:15:28.360
They didn't want to talk
about who was involved.

00:15:28.444 --> 00:15:31.405
They were willing
to identify certain statues.

00:15:39.038 --> 00:15:42.833
maybe your uncle, your grandmother
would know about something?"

00:15:46.503 --> 00:15:53.510
Personally, I thought it would take
a long time to put the puzzle together.

00:15:54.386 --> 00:15:58.724
We had to work along with them,
eat what they eat,

00:15:58.932 --> 00:16:01.060
sit on the ground where
they sit.

00:16:01.185 --> 00:16:03.729
And after that,
when you start talking to them,

00:16:03.812 --> 00:16:06.607
they say,
"Now I remember something."

00:16:15.616 --> 00:16:18.535
I’ve never told this story to anyone.

00:16:18.577 --> 00:16:24.416
I’ve been living here and I’ve always seen
Srah Srang and the temples since birth.

00:16:24.416 --> 00:16:31.298
They were so beautiful before, unlike now.

00:16:31.298 --> 00:16:40.432
I don’t know how they stole it.
They might have sawed the heads with their sawing tools.

00:16:40.432 --> 00:16:45.896
They put five heads and
five Neang in two sacks.

00:16:45.896 --> 00:16:49.775
I cooked food for them everyday.

00:16:51.610 --> 00:16:55.614
How could I avoid asking them
“Where had you brought the heads [statues] to? ”

00:16:55.864 --> 00:16:59.076
“Why did you steal such things?”

00:17:00.410 --> 00:17:01.912
They didn’t say a word.

00:17:11.797 --> 00:17:17.469
The looters tried to intimidate us.

00:17:17.469 --> 00:17:20.764
Like when they stormed
into the Angkor Conservation,

00:17:20.764 --> 00:17:24.768
it was like they came for war.

00:17:24.768 --> 00:17:27.813
They shot B-40 rockets into here from over there.

00:17:27.813 --> 00:17:29.940
There were sculptures in the warehouse.

00:17:29.940 --> 00:17:32.025
The attackers took them.

00:17:32.025 --> 00:17:36.363
It's very hard to talk about this.

00:17:46.665 --> 00:17:51.628
The reason why we have the issues
of looting and illicit trafficking

00:17:51.712 --> 00:17:54.381
is because there is demand.

00:17:55.299 --> 00:17:58.802
Khmer people, we believe that

00:17:58.927 --> 00:18:03.223
the reason why Cambodia
went through so much suffering

00:18:03.307 --> 00:18:09.313
and how our nation was torn apart
for so many generations

00:18:09.313 --> 00:18:16.361
was because our gods were displaced,
dismembered and broken.

00:18:16.486 --> 00:18:21.950
You transform a piece of rock
into a piece of art

00:18:22.367 --> 00:18:26.496
and then you also embed spirituality,

00:18:27.497 --> 00:18:30.792
a sense of divinity
in that piece of rock.

00:18:32.377 --> 00:18:34.129
They're not just statues.

00:18:34.254 --> 00:18:39.134
They're our gods, they are our kings,
they are our ancestors.

00:18:39.468 --> 00:18:41.678
If we are not careful,

00:18:41.803 --> 00:18:45.098
my children, the future generation,

00:18:45.182 --> 00:18:49.561
might lose the collective memory
of their identity.

00:18:51.230 --> 00:18:54.149
I feel very uncomfortable

00:18:54.274 --> 00:19:02.249
that we transform a sacred value
for people into money.

00:19:07.287 --> 00:19:12.125
Because stealing artifacts
is like destroying our nation.

00:19:12.125 --> 00:19:15.379
I don't like that.
I'm also a stone artisan.

00:19:32.229 --> 00:19:35.190
Oh giant, why did you lose in a game?

00:19:36.316 --> 00:19:38.277
This is a giant.

00:19:38.443 --> 00:19:41.655
It’s broken, but it was
in great shape before.

00:19:42.489 --> 00:19:46.660
[They were placed] in a queue nicely.

00:19:49.454 --> 00:19:52.958
Nothing remained.

00:19:55.043 --> 00:19:59.631
Oh dear, I feel deeply sorry for them.

00:20:08.765 --> 00:20:12.978
When we first met the former looter,

00:20:13.979 --> 00:20:17.524
it took many times
for them to open up.

00:20:22.446 --> 00:20:24.823
Blue Tiger is extraordinary.

00:20:26.867 --> 00:20:33.165
He was a trusted lieutenant of Lion,
the head of the gang.

00:20:33.999 --> 00:20:37.919
You kind of say,
"Oh, this is one of the leaders."

00:20:38.128 --> 00:20:40.255
"He knows what he's talking about."

00:20:41.381 --> 00:20:44.634
He has helped us tremendously.

00:20:44.801 --> 00:20:47.346
Given what was taken
out of Prasat Krachap,

00:20:47.429 --> 00:20:50.557
as soon as I heard about
the statues that came out of there,

00:20:50.640 --> 00:20:54.227
I knew that this was
an extremely significant temple.

00:20:54.353 --> 00:20:58.231
I now believe it maybe is one
of the most important ones in Cambodia.

00:20:58.482 --> 00:21:01.693
And Blue Tiger was there

00:21:01.777 --> 00:21:05.572
and participated
in the removal of the statues.

00:21:08.116 --> 00:21:10.702
I was born in the year of the Tiger.

00:21:10.911 --> 00:21:16.917
Then I continued to work
on the rice field with my parents.

00:21:17.250 --> 00:21:23.048
I became a Khmer Rouge soldier
when I was around 11 years old.

00:21:23.215 --> 00:21:25.550
They called me,
so I couldn’t continue to study.

00:21:26.760 --> 00:21:33.100
My teacher bid farewell to students
to become a soldier for Lon Nol.

00:21:33.725 --> 00:21:36.686
However, they gave us enough food to eat.

00:21:37.104 --> 00:21:42.776
At night, we would go
to shoot the deer and roe deer

00:21:42.859 --> 00:21:45.821
as there were many animals
in the thick forest near Prasat Krahom.

00:21:45.987 --> 00:21:50.659
In my opinion,
both human and statues were miserable.

00:21:51.326 --> 00:21:53.370
With the endless war,
I had to carry guns.

00:21:54.413 --> 00:22:01.628
I was in a war for over 20 years,
but I didn’t have any scars.

00:22:02.212 --> 00:22:06.925
Thanks to my mother’s merit,
the mine didn’t explode when I stepped on it.

00:22:19.771 --> 00:22:22.107
Khmer Rouge was a communist movement.

00:22:22.190 --> 00:22:28.029
They started guerrilla warfare
from the early 60s.

00:22:28.155 --> 00:22:33.034
You know, in the 60s, President Nixon
and his Secretary of State, Kissinger,

00:22:33.118 --> 00:22:36.288
planned a secret bombing of Cambodia.

00:22:36.371 --> 00:22:40.000
They bombed Cambodia
without telling Congress.

00:22:46.131 --> 00:22:48.258
More bombs were dropped on Cambodia

00:22:48.341 --> 00:22:51.094
than any time before
in mankind's history.

00:22:51.178 --> 00:22:55.515
I've seen anywhere from
150,000 people were killed and up.

00:22:58.643 --> 00:23:03.773
It definitely destabilized the country.
There's no question about it.

00:23:08.445 --> 00:23:13.241
The Khmer Rouge were empowered
by the bombing

00:23:13.366 --> 00:23:17.871
because so many people in
the countryside joined the Khmer Rouge.

00:23:19.414 --> 00:23:23.293
It's April 1975,  Khmer Rouge soldiers

00:23:24.002 --> 00:23:28.882
are surging into Phnom Penh,
Cambodia’s capital.

00:23:29.049 --> 00:23:33.762
Widespread panic permeates the streets,
as the new government empties the city,

00:23:33.845 --> 00:23:37.474
marching the population
in to the countryside.

00:23:51.321 --> 00:23:55.867
They undertook a very radical
transformation of Cambodian society.

00:23:55.951 --> 00:23:57.869
They basically tore apart

00:23:57.994 --> 00:24:02.374
all the traditions and institutions
of Cambodian life.

00:24:02.457 --> 00:24:08.088
So they tore apart families, schools,
the government,

00:24:09.047 --> 00:24:13.134
Buddhism,
all these things they tried to destroy.

00:24:19.766 --> 00:24:31.611
A man was killed by an anti-tank mine when
he rode an ox cart near Damrey Sar.

00:24:32.779 --> 00:24:39.494
His flesh and bones were burned.

00:24:40.787 --> 00:24:42.872
We only saw his scarf on a tree.

00:24:43.707 --> 00:24:47.586
Khmer Rouge tortured and killed people,
including small children.

00:24:48.253 --> 00:24:51.798
For the adults,
they let them starve.

00:24:51.798 --> 00:24:54.884
The dead people were swollen.

00:24:55.218 --> 00:24:58.013
Many people had died,
including my two children.

00:25:00.473 --> 00:25:04.477
I think they've estimated between
one and three million people died

00:25:04.561 --> 00:25:08.773
from either being
murdered or from famine or illness.

00:25:08.898 --> 00:25:11.401
After the Khmer Rouge fell,

00:25:11.484 --> 00:25:13.695
all these people had been separated

00:25:13.778 --> 00:25:16.156
from their villages,
from their families,

00:25:16.239 --> 00:25:18.658
they didn't know who was alive
or who was dead.

00:25:18.742 --> 00:25:20.660
They had no income.

00:25:20.744 --> 00:25:24.581
It was a desperate struggle
for survival.

00:25:24.706 --> 00:25:28.251
All kinds of looting
of artifacts that took place.

00:25:38.136 --> 00:25:43.767
Without realising it,
they become thieves who rob their own homes.

00:25:43.767 --> 00:25:47.896
As for other countries,
they waited and watched,

00:25:47.896 --> 00:25:54.844
because ancient artifacts are items of value,
especially ones from Cambodia.

00:25:54.861 --> 00:25:58.448
Looting, theft,
it happens all around the world.

00:25:58.615 --> 00:26:02.494
In conflict and crisis zones,

00:26:03.036 --> 00:26:06.790
you quite often have
a breakdown of the social order.

00:26:06.873 --> 00:26:10.293
You have opportunity for criminals,

00:26:10.377 --> 00:26:15.131
but also people we wouldn't
necessarily think of as criminals,

00:26:15.632 --> 00:26:20.720
to take advantage of that situation,
maybe to feed their families.

00:26:28.353 --> 00:26:32.732
In 2016, Latchford, he's just a blip
on the radar screen.

00:26:32.816 --> 00:26:35.402
So my first question to myself:

00:26:35.527 --> 00:26:37.112
"What is Latchford about?"

00:26:39.030 --> 00:26:42.409
Latchford was born
in the British Raj in India

00:26:42.492 --> 00:26:44.202
and then went to boarding school.

00:26:44.327 --> 00:26:47.288
When he was about 20,
he moved to Bangkok.

00:26:47.372 --> 00:26:50.625
And then he just fell in love
with Khmer culture

00:26:50.709 --> 00:26:54.671
because, of course, Thailand
and Cambodia share a border.

00:26:54.796 --> 00:27:02.512
Latchford had a reputation for
hanging out with the museum glitterati,

00:27:02.595 --> 00:27:04.597
the society people.

00:27:04.723 --> 00:27:08.143
He was a very high-profile character
around Bangkok.

00:27:09.269 --> 00:27:13.690
I was at dinner one evening
with François Duhau de Berenx,

00:27:13.773 --> 00:27:15.775
who was an interior decorator.

00:27:15.900 --> 00:27:19.904
François showed me a stone female torso,

00:27:20.029 --> 00:27:25.034
and it immediately had an effect on me
that would change my life.

00:27:25.452 --> 00:27:28.580
I was smitten and could, from then on,

00:27:28.663 --> 00:27:32.417
think of nothing
but this wonderful torso.

00:27:33.418 --> 00:27:36.254
He fell in love with it
and he became this collector.

00:27:36.379 --> 00:27:40.759
And he started collecting
Khmer antiquity at this voracious speed.

00:27:41.092 --> 00:27:46.181
He became one of the most preeminent
scholars of Khmer antiquities as well.

00:27:46.306 --> 00:27:50.226
He wrote these three coffee table books
that really catapulted his name

00:27:50.310 --> 00:27:54.314
to the top of people who knew
anything about Khmer statuary.

00:27:54.481 --> 00:27:57.567
One of my jobs
as a journalist in Bangkok

00:27:57.650 --> 00:28:00.862
was to write a story
about Douglas Latchford.

00:28:00.987 --> 00:28:04.199
And he showed me
through his place.

00:28:04.324 --> 00:28:06.659
Every little nook and cranny
of that apartment

00:28:06.743 --> 00:28:08.661
had ancient artifacts
sitting on it.

00:28:08.787 --> 00:28:11.748
He had beautiful artwork on the walls,
it was very tastefully done.

00:28:11.873 --> 00:28:13.958
Pretty much like you'd see in a museum,

00:28:14.042 --> 00:28:17.462
but these were sitting
on mantelpieces and shelves.

00:28:18.046 --> 00:28:21.257
You could see he had
a deep affection for those pieces,

00:28:21.341 --> 00:28:23.343
probably more than he did for people.

00:28:26.179 --> 00:28:28.139
A fortune teller had told him

00:28:28.223 --> 00:28:31.100
that he had once been Khmer
in a previous life,

00:28:31.184 --> 00:28:34.187
and that's why he loved
all these Khmer statues.

00:28:35.605 --> 00:28:40.527
It's very interesting because Latchford
was both public and very secretive.

00:28:40.860 --> 00:28:42.195
On the public side,

00:28:42.320 --> 00:28:48.660
he tried to present himself as
this adventurer-scholar, in his words.

00:28:48.743 --> 00:28:53.748
So this is kind of drawing on
those colonial motifs

00:28:53.832 --> 00:28:56.835
of a very heroic European man

00:28:56.918 --> 00:28:59.629
who goes into the jungle
and discovers lost cities.

00:28:59.796 --> 00:29:03.424
Somebody who rescued
these Khmer artifacts

00:29:03.508 --> 00:29:06.261
that had been lost to the jungle.

00:29:06.344 --> 00:29:07.846
When I complimented him

00:29:07.971 --> 00:29:11.224
on the amazing array of things
he had in his apartment,

00:29:11.307 --> 00:29:13.893
he laughed and said,
"Yeah, but my best stuff

00:29:14.018 --> 00:29:17.564
"is at my daughter's place
in Mayfair in London."

00:29:20.608 --> 00:29:23.653
Douglas owned the entire
apartment block that he lived in.

00:29:23.736 --> 00:29:25.446
He kept a whole floor for himself.

00:29:25.572 --> 00:29:28.741
It's right on a canal
in the middle of Bangkok.

00:29:29.075 --> 00:29:31.202
There was very heavy security there.

00:29:31.286 --> 00:29:34.247
I remember walking up to the window
of the security guard there

00:29:34.372 --> 00:29:37.250
and there being a number
of other security guards

00:29:37.333 --> 00:29:40.420
watching me from inside the gate,
all bodybuilders.

00:29:40.545 --> 00:29:43.298
It wasn't just one or two guys,
it was about five or six.

00:29:43.423 --> 00:29:46.467
Mini Schwarzeneggers, yeah,
Pocket Hercules,

00:29:46.551 --> 00:29:50.054
whatever you want to say, but they're
all muscle men, bodybuilders,

00:29:50.179 --> 00:29:52.265
and obviously very strong.

00:29:54.851 --> 00:29:57.478
One of the things I do as a hobby

00:29:57.562 --> 00:30:01.232
is to help the Thai
Bodybuilding Association.

00:30:01.316 --> 00:30:05.528
I was elected as president of Asia
earlier this year.

00:30:06.529 --> 00:30:11.117
I'm also president
of the Thai Bodybuilding Association.

00:30:12.952 --> 00:30:17.123
His love of the Thai bodybuilding,

00:30:17.206 --> 00:30:21.419
so we're told,
had more to do with his lifestyle

00:30:21.544 --> 00:30:28.343
than anything to do with sport.

00:30:31.054 --> 00:30:36.225
I was deeply impressed when Latchford

00:30:36.225 --> 00:30:38.478
did his book launch.

00:30:39.479 --> 00:30:42.899
It started with bodybuilders
in golden costumes.

00:30:43.483 --> 00:30:48.196
They walked out from the gate
of the mansion.

00:30:48.196 --> 00:30:52.158
They walked slowly and firmly.

00:30:52.700 --> 00:30:54.744
The bodybuilders came out first

00:30:54.744 --> 00:30:56.454
followed by Latchford.

00:30:56.788 --> 00:31:02.293
They walked to a small garden
that was prepared for a party.

00:31:03.962 --> 00:31:07.048
Halfway through the interview,
he said "Let's have a pause,"

00:31:07.215 --> 00:31:10.218
and he picked up a bell on the table,
he rang a little bell.

00:31:10.885 --> 00:31:14.263
The door swung open
and a Thai guy came in

00:31:14.347 --> 00:31:18.476
with a tight shirt on and a tie,
a butler-type guy.

00:31:18.601 --> 00:31:21.688
The bulging muscles
were nearly splitting his shirt

00:31:21.771 --> 00:31:24.065
and he came in and said,

00:31:24.148 --> 00:31:27.193
"Would you like Earl Grey
or English Breakfast?"

00:31:28.528 --> 00:31:34.158
I happened to see some sculptures
from Latchford's collection in the house.

00:31:34.784 --> 00:31:39.038
One was a woman's head of this size.

00:31:39.914 --> 00:31:40.957
Latchford said,

00:31:41.290 --> 00:31:43.292
"It's Kate Moss."

00:31:44.002 --> 00:31:46.546
"She's a supermodel."

00:31:46.546 --> 00:31:48.339
I was like, "Wow,

00:31:48.339 --> 00:31:49.799
it's so beautiful."

00:31:50.091 --> 00:31:52.301
And I told him,

00:31:52.885 --> 00:31:56.848
"You should have a sculpture of yourself,
don't you think?"

00:31:57.598 --> 00:32:01.894
"I'll find a sculptor to make it for you."

00:32:01.894 --> 00:32:04.439
And he said, "You’d be welcome to!"

00:32:04.897 --> 00:32:06.816
"I want it."

00:32:08.651 --> 00:32:12.280
It took a long time for them to realize
who exactly this man was.

00:32:12.405 --> 00:32:17.910
For the longest time, he was just
this kind of quirky, romantic figure

00:32:17.994 --> 00:32:20.329
who was this bodybuilding aficionado

00:32:20.455 --> 00:32:25.460
and probably kind of an interesting,
strange dinner conversation companion.

00:32:27.378 --> 00:32:29.881
When I went and interviewed
some of the looters,

00:32:29.964 --> 00:32:34.052
they talk about how they actually
met with Douglas Latchford.

00:32:34.135 --> 00:32:39.182
So he has direct communication
and direct access to the looters.

00:32:53.529 --> 00:32:55.031
They dug for it at night.

00:32:56.240 --> 00:33:03.915
Before they dug, they prayed for their wellness
and the statue to be found quickly.

00:33:04.457 --> 00:33:07.502
Some statues didn’t have heads,
because they only took the heads.

00:33:07.627 --> 00:33:10.588
For the small and carriable statues,
they carried them.

00:33:21.891 --> 00:33:29.232
Because when I was a soldier living in the jungle,
I was starving.

00:33:29.941 --> 00:33:33.569
the head commander led us to do bad things,
how could we say no?

00:33:34.570 --> 00:33:37.115
They’d shoot me to death
if I didn’t follow them.

00:33:43.913 --> 00:33:47.500
They looked like simple hills,
but there were many [statues] buried in the earth.

00:33:48.459 --> 00:33:52.547
They dug until their hoes got broken,
then they would buy new hoes to continue digging.

00:33:52.839 --> 00:33:59.512
When they dug, they found [the statues] of Naga,
heads, or elephants.

00:33:59.512 --> 00:34:04.100
I was young, yet I was aware
that it was an act of treason.

00:34:05.601 --> 00:34:11.607
Those are not just heads, but gods.

00:34:13.234 --> 00:34:15.736
First, they had to lay it down.

00:34:16.404 --> 00:34:23.578
They apologized to the statue
for taking its head.

00:34:23.828 --> 00:34:32.128
They wrapped that head with fabric
and they fired it by using petroleum.

00:34:32.461 --> 00:34:38.509
After the fabric got burned,
they used axes to break it.

00:34:39.594 --> 00:34:43.014
“Oh this hand is too big,
we have cut it off.”

00:34:44.265 --> 00:34:52.481
They wrapped the fabric and burned it down,
then it was perfectly cut off.

00:34:57.403 --> 00:35:03.576
They took everything, but it took them two or three days
to take out those 11 statues.

00:35:03.784 --> 00:35:05.286
They applauded when they found it.

00:35:05.912 --> 00:35:11.417
Then they hosted a ritual ceremony to offer a pig,
and they drank wine and danced happily.

00:35:32.480 --> 00:35:34.607
We sat down with Blue Tiger,

00:35:34.732 --> 00:35:38.653
showed the images of artifacts
that we were still hunting.

00:35:38.778 --> 00:35:42.698
He was able to and another looter
was able to identify some pieces

00:35:42.782 --> 00:35:47.453
that they were directly responsible
for having taken out of the country,

00:35:47.536 --> 00:35:49.247
which was so rare.

00:35:49.372 --> 00:35:53.459
The entire interview was a wow moment.

00:35:54.585 --> 00:35:56.545
Taking them out was not easy.

00:35:56.963 --> 00:36:03.344
With the carrying poles, we had to move
slowly to ensure that they wouldn’t get broken.

00:36:03.678 --> 00:36:06.097
Taking one statue out took almost half a day.

00:36:06.097 --> 00:36:09.892
They couldn’t push. They had to
move them slowly day and night.

00:36:10.601 --> 00:36:19.443
At Krachab temple, the peacock statue was discovered
as they dug the earth.

00:36:19.443 --> 00:36:21.929
The peacock statue was huge.

00:36:21.946 --> 00:36:27.118
We found on Douglas Latchford's
computer a photo of this temple

00:36:27.201 --> 00:36:31.122
and it showed just the top
of that piece up there

00:36:31.205 --> 00:36:34.667
and it was labeled "Peacock."

00:36:34.917 --> 00:36:36.961
We heard from Lion

00:36:37.086 --> 00:36:42.174
how he came here in 1997
and he dug up the peacock.

00:36:44.468 --> 00:36:47.263
The peacock was found here.

00:36:47.263 --> 00:36:50.683
There were about 20 to 30 people in the group.

00:36:51.434 --> 00:36:54.603
They stood on both sides to help pull it.

00:36:54.729 --> 00:36:59.859
This is the statue,
and these are the carrying poles.

00:37:00.985 --> 00:37:03.696
The carrying poles had to be placed like this

00:37:05.948 --> 00:37:09.952
facing toward that direction.

00:37:12.121 --> 00:37:14.874
Then they could move the statue.

00:37:14.874 --> 00:37:21.130
When the statue had moved a little bit,
they could place carrying poles to move it again.

00:37:21.464 --> 00:37:33.559
When it was moved a bit further,
they could place a rope and carrying poles to move again.

00:37:36.520 --> 00:37:39.273
I had my eyes wide open
and my jaw dropped

00:37:39.357 --> 00:37:41.817
the entire time
we were talking to them

00:37:41.942 --> 00:37:44.236
because who, what,
where, when, how, right?

00:37:44.320 --> 00:37:46.781
That's what you need to prove a case.

00:37:47.656 --> 00:37:51.660
We have that from the mouth
of the very people involved.

00:37:51.786 --> 00:37:57.291
The Skanda on Peacock statue,
which sold for $1.5 million,

00:37:57.416 --> 00:38:02.338
I was able to successfully track it down
and I got it returned to Cambodia.

00:38:03.255 --> 00:38:05.966
It's a unique masterpiece for Cambodia.

00:38:06.175 --> 00:38:09.470
Sculpted from one piece of stone,

00:38:09.553 --> 00:38:11.847
from pedestal to the top,

00:38:11.931 --> 00:38:14.892
and with all those great details.

00:38:15.017 --> 00:38:18.729
What made the Cambodians
and the local people

00:38:19.188 --> 00:38:22.650
most happy about
the return of this piece:

00:38:22.775 --> 00:38:26.278
Skanda is our god of love,

00:38:26.737 --> 00:38:30.950
and very powerful now in Cambodia.

00:38:44.797 --> 00:38:49.135
And then your hunt continues
because there are so many of them.

00:38:51.387 --> 00:38:57.226
After the sculptures were taken out
from Koh Ker compound,

00:38:57.351 --> 00:39:02.314
they will take it to the border,
to Thailand,

00:39:02.940 --> 00:39:05.609
to Bangkok, to Latchford.

00:39:09.697 --> 00:39:13.409
They couldn’t take them out easily

00:39:13.409 --> 00:39:17.705
when the Khmer Rouge soldiers kept
shooting and placing mines.

00:39:18.038 --> 00:39:24.628
As we come to learn, there are different
Khmer Rouge controllers of areas

00:39:24.712 --> 00:39:29.133
in between the temple
in the forest, the jungle,

00:39:29.467 --> 00:39:33.262
and getting it across the border
and into Thailand.

00:39:33.888 --> 00:39:38.476
They had to negotiate with Khmer Rouge
to remove the mines,

00:39:39.143 --> 00:39:42.688
and gave them money so that
they could pass through their territory.

00:39:43.856 --> 00:39:45.232
That’s how it worked.

00:39:46.484 --> 00:39:49.862
Carrying it was a hard-working job.

00:39:50.196 --> 00:39:54.241
We had to carry
and climb up the mountain very slowly.

00:39:54.450 --> 00:39:57.786
We had to drag, pull,
or even climb with vines.

00:39:58.370 --> 00:40:01.165
We passed through many bushes.

00:40:01.165 --> 00:40:03.626
We’d be killed by mine explosion
if we went on the roads.

00:40:04.668 --> 00:40:06.712
There were cases of robbing from each other.

00:40:07.213 --> 00:40:09.840
After the robbery,
there were cases of killing each other.

00:40:12.051 --> 00:40:16.722
When we reached the destination,
they took a truck to take it.

00:40:17.264 --> 00:40:19.049
It was a truck from Thailand.

00:40:19.558 --> 00:40:23.687
Armed soldiers were there on the car
who would dare to object them?

00:40:24.438 --> 00:40:33.656
They weren't just low-level soldiers,
some were in the top ranks of the division.

00:40:34.031 --> 00:40:36.909
The buyers and their bodyguards
were waiting there to buy.

00:40:37.326 --> 00:40:39.995
I didn’t see the money,
they provided food only.

00:40:39.995 --> 00:40:44.208
They took it and they went
to have a party in Bangkok.

00:40:45.084 --> 00:40:48.754
Then they became wealthy.
That’s what we all knew.

00:40:52.550 --> 00:40:59.390
Those people, they know they are selling
their soul to the outsider

00:40:59.515 --> 00:41:04.144
in exchange for what they need
the most, like food, medicine.

00:41:04.228 --> 00:41:07.565
Most of the looters told us
how they got paid

00:41:07.731 --> 00:41:09.775
less than $100 USD

00:41:09.858 --> 00:41:13.320
for 15 people,
and for a week of work.

00:41:17.866 --> 00:41:22.037
He's selling statues
for one, 1.5 a piece.

00:41:22.246 --> 00:41:26.709
We know Shiva and Skanda
he tried to sell for $25 million.

00:41:26.792 --> 00:41:30.588
He had another statue,
the Durga that's going back to Vietnam,

00:41:30.671 --> 00:41:34.508
he tried to sell for $34 million!

00:41:48.981 --> 00:41:52.026
Once I realized
that Latchford's a bigger player,

00:41:52.109 --> 00:41:53.777
Latchford becomes his own board.

00:41:53.902 --> 00:41:57.865
Who are his sources?
His sources are the looters in Cambodia.

00:41:57.990 --> 00:42:00.451
Who is he supplying?
Numerous entities.

00:42:00.534 --> 00:42:04.413
They're going to supply museums,
to supply gallery owners,

00:42:04.496 --> 00:42:06.540
to supply private collectors.

00:42:06.624 --> 00:42:08.292
Now, Latchford's in the middle,

00:42:08.417 --> 00:42:13.130
and you have those arms branching out
to all these other people

00:42:13.213 --> 00:42:16.008
who have received
illicit property from him.

00:42:16.091 --> 00:42:18.469
Who else is helping Latchford
with provenance?

00:42:18.636 --> 00:42:20.429
Who are Latchford's restorers?

00:42:20.512 --> 00:42:23.265
And then his resellers,
there could be a dozen of them.

00:42:24.183 --> 00:42:27.102
Before you know it,
you have so many names on the board.

00:42:27.186 --> 00:42:30.606
It was simply a matter of:
"Okay, what's next?"

00:42:36.487 --> 00:42:42.368
You know, among all the many people
who aided and abetted Douglas Latchford,

00:42:42.785 --> 00:42:46.705
Emma Bunker is probably
the most important person.

00:42:46.789 --> 00:42:50.793
Emma Bunker was a major co-conspirator
of Douglas Latchford's.

00:42:51.835 --> 00:42:56.048
Because Emma Bunker was attached
to the Denver Art Museum,

00:42:56.131 --> 00:42:59.134
Latchford could introduce pieces
to a major museum

00:42:59.885 --> 00:43:03.347
and have Emma Bunker
vouch for the integrity of the pieces

00:43:03.472 --> 00:43:05.391
for the purpose of laundering,

00:43:05.474 --> 00:43:09.978
so they could turn around and resell it
using the name of the Denver Art Museum.

00:43:10.104 --> 00:43:12.898
"This piece was just shown
at the Denver Art Museum,"

00:43:12.981 --> 00:43:15.984
so no one would ever think
that there was a problem with it.

00:43:16.068 --> 00:43:17.903
She was also a scholar.

00:43:17.986 --> 00:43:20.739
I think she never
actually finished her PhD,

00:43:20.823 --> 00:43:25.077
but she did really want
to be well-known as a scholar.

00:43:25.202 --> 00:43:27.037
And she helped him co-author

00:43:27.121 --> 00:43:30.207
a number of these coffee table books
about Khmer statuary,

00:43:30.332 --> 00:43:33.001
which authorities later said
were essentially used

00:43:33.127 --> 00:43:36.046
to launder these looted statues.

00:43:36.714 --> 00:43:39.967
Not everything that was photographed
in the books was looted,

00:43:40.050 --> 00:43:41.385
but that's how it works.

00:43:41.468 --> 00:43:44.930
You take some legitimate ones,
mix them with ones that are looted

00:43:45.013 --> 00:43:46.473
and poof, provenance, right?

00:43:50.185 --> 00:43:53.272
Provenance is the history
of an artifact,

00:43:53.397 --> 00:43:55.733
meaning the ownership history.

00:43:55.816 --> 00:43:58.152
A lot of museums don't actually list
provenance information.

00:43:58.318 --> 00:44:00.863
They would not share
those details with us.

00:44:00.946 --> 00:44:03.240
There's a number of Latchford pieces

00:44:03.365 --> 00:44:07.119
that have an Ian Donaldson
reference in the provenance.

00:44:08.287 --> 00:44:12.291
Some of them were supposedly written
after Ian Donaldson had already died.

00:44:12.374 --> 00:44:17.045
It's clearly letters that were
cooked up by Latchford

00:44:17.129 --> 00:44:20.215
just to be able to show
the museum something.

00:44:20.758 --> 00:44:25.262
I mean, how cynical is that?
You use your dead friend's name

00:44:25.345 --> 00:44:30.184
and you imitate, try to fake
a signature for your dead friend.

00:44:30.309 --> 00:44:32.853
It's really quite sick, isn't it?

00:44:37.524 --> 00:44:40.068
There's a list at Homeland Security,

00:44:40.861 --> 00:44:44.698
and on that list is maybe
a dozen museums

00:44:44.823 --> 00:44:46.658
that have Latchford pieces.

00:44:46.742 --> 00:44:49.328
The Met was in New York,
I was based in New York.

00:44:49.411 --> 00:44:52.956
We knew they had some pieces.
That would be the next one to go after.

00:44:54.458 --> 00:44:56.877
There are some clear signs of looting,

00:44:57.002 --> 00:45:00.214
and it's something we look for
when we're poring over evidence.

00:45:00.297 --> 00:45:02.633
A statue will get broken
into smaller parts.

00:45:02.716 --> 00:45:04.259
Makes it easier to ship.

00:45:04.384 --> 00:45:07.095
Soil deposits
are a thing that we look for.

00:45:07.262 --> 00:45:11.308
Anything that's exposed to the elements,
you start to see some corrosion.

00:45:11.433 --> 00:45:12.976
Corrosion is a red flag.

00:45:16.647 --> 00:45:18.774
We have security on the front steps.

00:45:25.405 --> 00:45:28.075
-Southeast Asia.
-Southeast Asia, over there.

00:45:35.290 --> 00:45:38.919
There's so many pieces here
that we have records on,

00:45:39.002 --> 00:45:40.963
I don't even know where to begin.

00:45:42.047 --> 00:45:44.341
So this headless female figure,

00:45:44.758 --> 00:45:51.265
we had the opportunity to speak
with one of the looters in Cambodia,

00:45:51.640 --> 00:45:55.519
and he admitted his role
in the removal of this piece

00:45:55.602 --> 00:45:58.230
and transfer across
the border into Thailand.

00:45:58.730 --> 00:46:04.444
On the condition report for this piece,
it notes burial soil found on the piece.

00:46:07.906 --> 00:46:10.659
For this bronze Avalokiteshvara,

00:46:10.742 --> 00:46:16.206
we know that it arrived heavily damaged,
from the Met's own internal reporting.

00:46:16.331 --> 00:46:19.501
We have from Latchford's
email source photos,

00:46:19.585 --> 00:46:23.797
source photos showing the piece in
the condition in which it was found.

00:46:24.548 --> 00:46:29.469
This four-armed bronze Avalokiteshvara,

00:46:29.636 --> 00:46:34.308
the Met's own condition report
states that it arrived heavily corroded.

00:46:34.391 --> 00:46:38.186
You can even still see
parts of the corrosion

00:46:38.270 --> 00:46:41.815
on the top crown
and on one of the arms.

00:46:41.899 --> 00:46:45.652
So, you know, typical evidence
of pieces that were looted,

00:46:45.736 --> 00:46:47.571
when they arrive corroded.

00:46:57.372 --> 00:47:00.459
I have stuff on this one too.

00:47:01.501 --> 00:47:06.256
This standing forum Vishnu
has so many discrepancies

00:47:06.340 --> 00:47:09.676
in the provenance documents
contained at the Met.

00:47:10.302 --> 00:47:13.931
We learned the true story
of when it was found

00:47:14.014 --> 00:47:16.266
and when Latchford acquired it,

00:47:16.350 --> 00:47:18.936
and we presented that evidence
to the Met.

00:47:19.019 --> 00:47:23.231
It completely contradicts the story
that they have on their own records,

00:47:23.315 --> 00:47:25.651
and we showed the documentation
to support that.

00:47:25.776 --> 00:47:29.071
This piece has bad provenance
and was looted,

00:47:29.237 --> 00:47:30.697
like so many others.

00:47:30.822 --> 00:47:33.700
It should be a no-brainer
for this one to go back.

00:47:42.167 --> 00:47:46.046
I didn't run into him very many times,
but I knew him.

00:47:46.129 --> 00:47:48.298
He's a person you stay away from.

00:47:48.382 --> 00:47:51.885
Do you recognize these pieces
from the Met Museum?

00:47:52.052 --> 00:47:53.845
Either of these?

00:47:57.599 --> 00:48:01.061
These are obviously
very good pieces, yeah.

00:48:01.478 --> 00:48:03.563
Yeah. Did you ever own them?

00:48:03.647 --> 00:48:05.107
Because in his emails...

00:48:05.190 --> 00:48:06.942
Did I own them? Or...

00:48:07.025 --> 00:48:10.028
So in his emails, in Latchford's emails,

00:48:10.153 --> 00:48:14.241
he said that you sold those to the Met,

00:48:15.117 --> 00:48:16.493
both of those pieces.

00:48:16.618 --> 00:48:18.787
-No, certainly not.
-You didn't?

00:48:18.870 --> 00:48:20.455
Certainly not.

00:48:20.998 --> 00:48:22.249
Certainly not.

00:48:22.833 --> 00:48:26.753
If I would have owned them,
I would have kept them.

00:48:27.838 --> 00:48:30.298
Evidence has been presented to the Met

00:48:30.382 --> 00:48:34.386
that a number of the pieces
that they have were looted.

00:48:34.469 --> 00:48:35.762
Straight-up looted.

00:48:35.846 --> 00:48:39.891
Eyewitness testimony from
some of the looters that were involved.

00:48:40.600 --> 00:48:42.853
From the late 80s into the mid 90s,

00:48:42.936 --> 00:48:46.773
the Curator of South and Southeast Asian
Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

00:48:46.857 --> 00:48:50.318
had to fill an immense new gallery
that they were building.

00:48:50.444 --> 00:48:53.864
One of the people that could supply
that was Douglas Latchford.

00:48:54.072 --> 00:48:59.828
I went in 2015
in the Metropolitan Museum.

00:48:59.995 --> 00:49:04.207
I feel horrible and I don't want
to move from there.

00:49:04.332 --> 00:49:07.502
I don't think the visitors
realized that.

00:49:08.837 --> 00:49:12.132
The Metropolitan kept saying to me,
"Show me your evidence."

00:49:12.257 --> 00:49:14.676
And we kept asking them
for their provenance documents.

00:49:14.760 --> 00:49:17.429
They kept saying,
"Look at our website."

00:49:17.804 --> 00:49:19.723
There's hardly anything there.

00:49:20.140 --> 00:49:22.726
There's some records on some pieces

00:49:22.809 --> 00:49:26.313
where they have two conflicting
pieces of provenance

00:49:26.396 --> 00:49:29.733
for the same piece in their records.

00:49:30.442 --> 00:49:32.235
Here's where
we got the piece from,

00:49:32.319 --> 00:49:35.113
and a completely different story
which contradicts that one.

00:49:35.197 --> 00:49:38.325
The years are off,
the sources, the names are different.

00:49:38.408 --> 00:49:42.829
And they're in the same packet
for one of the pieces on display.

00:49:46.041 --> 00:49:49.669
You'd think that the Met,
with the team that they have,

00:49:49.753 --> 00:49:53.673
if they see different conflicting
provenance and they have those records,

00:49:53.757 --> 00:49:55.675
that might raise a red flag for them.

00:49:55.801 --> 00:49:59.638
And no one has made the connection
that they're different, right?

00:49:59.721 --> 00:50:02.057
Or that they conflict each other.

00:50:08.647 --> 00:50:13.068
To ignore the issue,
I think it's disrespectful.

00:50:15.112 --> 00:50:18.156
My name is Sophiline Cheam Shapiro,

00:50:18.240 --> 00:50:24.121
and I am the founder and director
of Sophiline Arts Ensemble.

00:50:25.288 --> 00:50:26.623
Performing at the Met,

00:50:26.790 --> 00:50:32.129
it was a form of quiet or silent protest

00:50:33.505 --> 00:50:38.343
to bring attention to the issues
of looted antiquity.

00:50:44.182 --> 00:50:46.351
You need prior permission to do this.

00:50:46.434 --> 00:50:48.478
You can't just do it in the gallery.

00:50:48.562 --> 00:50:49.855
Sorry.

00:50:50.397 --> 00:50:51.898
Please put on your shoes, too.

00:50:51.982 --> 00:50:55.110
You can't walk around barefoot
or in your stockings.

00:50:55.318 --> 00:50:57.445
This is the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

00:50:57.946 --> 00:51:00.323
I'm more disappointed than I'm angry.

00:51:00.949 --> 00:51:03.368
It's the Met!
Like, what are you doing?

00:51:06.788 --> 00:51:10.542
The Met Gala tickets are $75,000 each.

00:51:10.667 --> 00:51:13.086
I know nothing else of the Met Gala
except that

00:51:13.211 --> 00:51:17.090
Kim Kardashian posed in front
of an Egyptian sarcophagus made of gold,

00:51:17.174 --> 00:51:18.800
and we seized it!

00:51:28.351 --> 00:51:31.271
The old British museums
used to argue that,

00:51:31.396 --> 00:51:36.693
"If we didn't save these, good lord,
they would have just been lost!"

00:51:36.985 --> 00:51:38.945
Which probably isn't true,

00:51:39.029 --> 00:51:44.034
but it becomes a justification
for basically handling stolen goods.

00:51:45.076 --> 00:51:49.206
Admittedly, these things were
moonlighted out of Cambodia

00:51:49.289 --> 00:51:51.499
and wound up somewhere else.

00:51:51.583 --> 00:51:53.460
But had they not been,

00:51:53.543 --> 00:51:58.673
they would likely have been shot up
for target practice by the Khmer Rouge.

00:51:59.841 --> 00:52:02.510
My bicycle isn't
very well looked after by me,

00:52:02.594 --> 00:52:04.846
because I leave it outside
all the time,

00:52:04.930 --> 00:52:07.390
but someone else always
brings their bicycle inside

00:52:07.474 --> 00:52:09.517
and therefore
it's in much better condition.

00:52:09.601 --> 00:52:13.063
That's not a reason
for that other person to own my bicycle.

00:52:14.064 --> 00:52:18.818
When I buy a piece on principle,
I thoroughly research it.

00:52:18.944 --> 00:52:22.656
I certainly don't want to buy a piece
that's been stolen or anything.

00:52:23.073 --> 00:52:26.910
It is true that some
of the temples there had pieces stolen,

00:52:27.244 --> 00:52:29.746
but it wasn't on a large scale.

00:52:30.330 --> 00:52:32.082
Bullshit.

00:52:32.207 --> 00:52:33.750
That's not true.

00:52:56.731 --> 00:52:59.025
Welcome to Angkor Conservation.

00:52:59.150 --> 00:53:03.154
Here it looks like
a hospital for objects.

00:53:03.321 --> 00:53:06.700
More than 10,000 objects here.

00:53:20.255 --> 00:53:24.384
We try so hard to work on small pieces
of the broken objects.

00:53:24.509 --> 00:53:28.138
I try to check which one belongs.

00:53:28.263 --> 00:53:31.182
You can see if the textures
are the same or different.

00:53:31.516 --> 00:53:36.062
When we find together,
we can make like this.

00:53:42.110 --> 00:53:44.779
When we find a small piece
you can fit together,

00:53:44.904 --> 00:53:46.740
we're very happy.
Oh my God!

00:53:46.823 --> 00:53:48.533
So happy and proud about that.

00:53:51.286 --> 00:53:54.164
Makes me angry about the looters.

00:53:54.289 --> 00:53:58.043
If I see him, I will kill!
Or fight him!

00:54:10.555 --> 00:54:12.432
So this is a legitimate profession.

00:54:12.599 --> 00:54:14.476
But it's not legitimate

00:54:14.601 --> 00:54:18.355
when those restorers are taking in goods
that they know are stolen

00:54:19.272 --> 00:54:21.441
and repairing them.

00:54:22.734 --> 00:54:25.070
Neil Perry-Smith is an art restorer.

00:54:25.153 --> 00:54:29.949
I arrested him for his role in restoring
stolen and looted antiquities.

00:54:31.576 --> 00:54:34.037
Neil Perry was in London,

00:54:34.120 --> 00:54:37.207
and the artifacts
had to be shipped to London

00:54:37.290 --> 00:54:40.210
for Neil Perry
to start working on them.

00:54:41.378 --> 00:54:42.837
He helped Latchford

00:54:42.962 --> 00:54:46.925
to clean up and remove the dirt
and other evidence of looting.

00:54:47.050 --> 00:54:53.890
Once a finished fully restored artifact
is ready to sell,

00:54:53.973 --> 00:54:57.477
it's mostly Latchford reaching out
to his circle, his crew,

00:54:57.644 --> 00:55:02.524
and showing pictures, and oftentimes
those pictures show the pre-restoration

00:55:02.607 --> 00:55:04.818
and post-restoration photographs.

00:55:04.901 --> 00:55:06.736
So he's basically saying,

00:55:06.820 --> 00:55:10.740
"Here's when I found it,
and here's what it looks like now."

00:55:10.907 --> 00:55:16.454
Take an artifact that was worth
$100,000 to Latchford

00:55:17.205 --> 00:55:23.044
and it gets completely restored to
where now he could sell it for millions.

00:55:27.382 --> 00:55:31.594
Museums were a little bit easier
for us to investigate, the museum items.

00:55:31.678 --> 00:55:34.264
Private collectors,
it's a whole different world,

00:55:34.347 --> 00:55:37.434
and it's very, very difficult
as an investigative reporter

00:55:37.559 --> 00:55:39.686
because they're basically a black box.

00:55:39.769 --> 00:55:42.063
Unless the owners want to showcase

00:55:42.147 --> 00:55:44.441
their private collection
for some reason,

00:55:44.524 --> 00:55:47.485
you might never know
that that collection even exists.

00:55:51.531 --> 00:55:53.700
Brad sent me
this very discreet picture.

00:55:53.867 --> 00:55:55.410
He had gotten it from
an associate of Latchford,

00:55:55.493 --> 00:55:56.619
who gave him no information about it.

00:55:56.703 --> 00:55:58.413
"What do you know
about this?"

00:55:58.538 --> 00:56:01.124
I said, "Oh my gosh,
all of these Khmer antiquities

00:56:01.207 --> 00:56:04.419
"sitting in this billionaire's
living room."

00:56:10.550 --> 00:56:13.553
Where did this come from?
So we started trying to search.

00:56:13.636 --> 00:56:15.388
We found the name of the street,

00:56:15.555 --> 00:56:18.057
we found some details
about the couple.

00:56:18.183 --> 00:56:20.727
Then we were able
to kind of triangulate

00:56:20.894 --> 00:56:23.313
based on other real estate listings

00:56:23.396 --> 00:56:26.149
that had other similar pictures
that matched,

00:56:26.274 --> 00:56:28.485
that this was actually
the Lindemanns'.

00:56:29.819 --> 00:56:33.656
We have the Metropolitan Museum of Art
and now we have the Lindemanns.

00:56:33.740 --> 00:56:37.327
In each of those,
the number of pieces they had

00:56:37.494 --> 00:56:40.830
was far greater than we thought going in.

00:56:42.749 --> 00:56:45.835
George Lindemann Sr.
was the patriarch of this family.

00:56:45.919 --> 00:56:49.506
He and his wife Frayda have
tons of properties, tons of companies.

00:56:49.714 --> 00:56:52.008
I remember when I met them.

00:56:52.133 --> 00:56:56.179
They are very high-class people.
Upscale people.

00:56:58.223 --> 00:57:02.310
Access to the looters puts a spotlight
on the Lindemanns

00:57:02.393 --> 00:57:06.898
because the looters
are referencing specific pieces.

00:57:07.607 --> 00:57:12.529
And we sat down with Blue Tiger,
showed the images.

00:57:13.821 --> 00:57:17.492
Oh, this is the one.

00:57:20.453 --> 00:57:25.166
This one had been cut.

00:57:26.125 --> 00:57:31.422
There are some marks here.

00:57:31.839 --> 00:57:35.468
It was from that spot.

00:57:36.594 --> 00:57:39.347
Here is a sleeping statue.

00:57:44.102 --> 00:57:47.230
How can people find happiness,

00:57:47.313 --> 00:57:50.108
to have the head of the sculpture,

00:57:52.402 --> 00:57:54.946
just the head, cut,

00:57:56.322 --> 00:57:58.408
in their living room?

00:58:13.214 --> 00:58:17.927
Those should go back to where they belong,
to their original place.

00:58:23.808 --> 00:58:26.102
Many statues. Yeah.

00:58:26.936 --> 00:58:31.357
The statue of a reclining Vishnu
from Prasat Krachap.

00:58:32.567 --> 00:58:35.528
A lot of statues in the same house.

00:58:36.571 --> 00:58:37.822
Wow.

00:58:38.698 --> 00:58:41.743
They should be returned one day.

00:58:43.620 --> 00:58:45.705
Not in the living room.

00:58:48.458 --> 00:58:50.627
We decided to do a spin-off investigation.

00:58:50.710 --> 00:58:53.630
Why do the Lindemanns have these pieces,
and what else can we find?

00:58:53.755 --> 00:58:57.383
We started trying to track down
any other photographs we could find

00:58:57.467 --> 00:58:58.509
of other properties,

00:58:58.635 --> 00:59:01.763
including this 2021
Architectural Digest spread,

00:59:01.846 --> 00:59:04.807
which we realized
was Sloan Lindemann's.

00:59:04.932 --> 00:59:07.393
It was this beautiful courtyard

00:59:07.477 --> 00:59:10.146
that had these pedestals
on it that were empty.

00:59:10.313 --> 00:59:12.273
Combing through Peter Marino's website,

00:59:12.357 --> 00:59:14.359
the architect who worked
with the Lindemanns,

00:59:14.484 --> 00:59:17.153
and they found an identical photo,

00:59:17.236 --> 00:59:20.990
except these pedestals were not empty,
they had heads on them.

00:59:21.115 --> 00:59:24.285
And they had these Khmer heads,
really beautiful Khmer heads.

00:59:24.410 --> 00:59:25.828
To me, that's very suspicious.

00:59:26.245 --> 00:59:28.456
We have the picture with the heads,

00:59:28.539 --> 00:59:31.376
and then we have the same
beautiful courtyard with no heads,

00:59:31.459 --> 00:59:32.919
actually photoshopped out.

00:59:33.002 --> 00:59:36.005
And we thought, well, this is great.

00:59:38.925 --> 00:59:41.636
It's not until we start
getting records back

00:59:41.719 --> 00:59:44.222
and we're looking
and we're like, oh my God,

00:59:44.347 --> 00:59:49.894
a massive collection of rare,
extremely valuable and important pieces

00:59:49.977 --> 00:59:51.938
that needed to go back to Cambodia.

00:59:55.191 --> 01:00:00.238
The Lindemanns amassed a collection
valued around $35 million.

01:00:00.321 --> 01:00:04.575
And people who have that much money,
I think they want to be special.

01:00:04.659 --> 01:00:08.246
They want to have something special,
something that nobody else has.

01:00:08.371 --> 01:00:12.333
The Lindemanns,
they just weren't as cooperative.

01:00:13.000 --> 01:00:17.338
But ultimately, it came down to,
you have a choice to make.

01:00:18.214 --> 01:00:20.925
We can go the easy way
or the hard way.

01:00:37.191 --> 01:00:38.943
I used to see Latchford on the press.

01:00:39.068 --> 01:00:45.283
He was like a respected guy
by the art community.

01:00:45.324 --> 01:00:48.286
He certainly felt like he was untouchable,

01:00:48.369 --> 01:00:51.622
and so you might have to wonder
why he thought so.

01:00:55.918 --> 01:00:57.920
One-track minded,

01:00:58.004 --> 01:01:02.550
and he had very good friends
in high places.

01:01:03.718 --> 01:01:10.266
He was protected,
and he wouldn't tolerate any competition.

01:01:11.809 --> 01:01:15.688
I got an email from Douglas
saying he'd like to catch up with me

01:01:15.772 --> 01:01:17.815
at the National Museum in Phnom Penh.

01:01:17.982 --> 01:01:20.401
They gave him Cambodian
citizenship.

01:01:20.485 --> 01:01:22.445
The Deputy Prime Minister at the time

01:01:22.570 --> 01:01:25.573
conferred Cambodian citizenship on Douglas

01:01:25.656 --> 01:01:28.618
because he'd donated
so much to that museum.

01:01:28.743 --> 01:01:32.789
I have donated I think seven pieces back

01:01:32.872 --> 01:01:40.421
and I think these are primarily pieces
that they don't have representation of.

01:01:40.505 --> 01:01:43.090
And my family and I have decided

01:01:43.174 --> 01:01:47.720
that in the future we would like
to donate more back to Cambodia.

01:01:48.429 --> 01:01:52.809
He donated it in order to show
that he was good person.

01:01:52.809 --> 01:01:56.896
That way people in Cambodia would think

01:01:56.896 --> 01:01:59.565
"Oh he was so kind to have donated this."

01:01:59.941 --> 01:02:02.819
Deputy Prime Minister Sok An came,

01:02:02.902 --> 01:02:06.656
made a speech, and gave me a Khmer title.

01:02:07.073 --> 01:02:09.951
A royal title.

01:02:11.118 --> 01:02:13.663
So he came, he lied to the Cambodians,

01:02:13.746 --> 01:02:15.790
he flashed around a lot of money.

01:02:15.873 --> 01:02:17.458
I think he tricked them.

01:02:17.583 --> 01:02:21.045
I mean, they probably thought
they were doing the right thing.

01:02:21.128 --> 01:02:24.215
And in terms of getting these medallions,
Boy Scout badges,

01:02:24.298 --> 01:02:26.008
yeah, great, knock yourself out.

01:02:26.384 --> 01:02:29.136
You know, it just legitimizes him.

01:02:29.303 --> 01:02:32.056
He's got his bodybuilders,
his lawsuits, his lawyers.

01:02:32.139 --> 01:02:33.808
He's got the Bunker family.

01:02:33.891 --> 01:02:35.476
He's got lots of money.

01:02:35.601 --> 01:02:39.480
He had his addresses in London,
museums around the world.

01:02:39.605 --> 01:02:41.566
He's got everything he wanted.

01:02:47.238 --> 01:02:49.574
With the bodybuilders
came the bodyguards.

01:02:51.117 --> 01:02:56.163
They had a reputation
that scared a lot of people,

01:02:56.289 --> 01:02:59.917
in particular local journalists and fixers

01:03:00.042 --> 01:03:03.337
who might be working
on this type of story.

01:03:04.755 --> 01:03:08.926
He was offloading his collection
in exchange for diamonds,

01:03:09.010 --> 01:03:11.262
in exchange for other antiquities.

01:03:15.766 --> 01:03:18.853
Hello?
Good morning.

01:03:19.562 --> 01:03:21.480
Hi there.

01:03:22.690 --> 01:03:24.233
I got your email.

01:03:24.317 --> 01:03:26.652
Why are people interfering

01:03:26.736 --> 01:03:30.489
and coming to inform you
that I sold some bronzes?

01:03:30.573 --> 01:03:34.660
Well, I think they were upset
that things got sold.

01:03:34.744 --> 01:03:40.499
I think they thought that
they were sort of important

01:03:40.583 --> 01:03:45.254
and it was funny that they were sold.

01:03:45.671 --> 01:03:47.590
I mean, I was surprised.

01:03:47.673 --> 01:03:49.300
Well, who told you this?

01:03:49.383 --> 01:03:51.552
Why were these sold?

01:03:52.345 --> 01:03:56.015
I think they were listed as Skanda Trust.

01:03:56.098 --> 01:03:58.142
What's it got to do with them?

01:03:59.644 --> 01:04:02.688
People get curious when they move around.

01:04:04.523 --> 01:04:07.735
-That's all.
-Curiosity killed the cat.

01:04:08.694 --> 01:04:10.821
-So what else do you know?
-Nothing.

01:04:10.905 --> 01:04:12.323
Anything new and exciting?

01:04:12.406 --> 01:04:14.450
No, everything's quiet here.

01:04:15.409 --> 01:04:17.620
Well, is that good or not?

01:04:18.829 --> 01:04:20.957
No news is good news.

01:04:23.459 --> 01:04:24.794
We see him conspiring

01:04:24.919 --> 01:04:27.922
between him and Emma Bunker
or him and Nancy

01:04:28.839 --> 01:04:33.386
to manipulate the data
or the information that's out there

01:04:33.469 --> 01:04:35.221
to sort of dance around it.

01:04:35.346 --> 01:04:37.765
Their imagination has gone wild.

01:04:38.766 --> 01:04:41.227
They've seen too many
Indiana Jones films.

01:04:44.146 --> 01:04:47.608
Nancy Wiener was huge
for the Latchford case.

01:04:48.275 --> 01:04:51.195
She was an art dealer in Manhattan,

01:04:51.278 --> 01:04:55.491
and she specialized in Asian
and Southeast Asian antiquities.

01:04:55.616 --> 01:04:59.370
She was already being looked at
by Homeland Security.

01:04:59.870 --> 01:05:05.167
In March of 2016, her gallery is raided
and she's subsequently arrested.

01:05:07.586 --> 01:05:11.716
Having access to Nancy's records
really is the breakthrough moment

01:05:11.799 --> 01:05:14.719
in the case against Latchford,
because now we see,

01:05:14.802 --> 01:05:18.264
not only is he so blatant
in his emails with her

01:05:18.347 --> 01:05:21.183
about where he's finding pieces
in the field

01:05:21.267 --> 01:05:24.270
and the source and the condition
that they're coming in,

01:05:24.353 --> 01:05:29.191
but he's also blatantly discussing
with her how to make provenance.

01:05:29.400 --> 01:05:32.737
"What kind of provenance
are you going to need to sell this?"

01:05:32.820 --> 01:05:35.156
"Is this good enough?
I'll write this letter."

01:05:35.239 --> 01:05:36.991
He would send her little samples.

01:05:37.116 --> 01:05:40.703
So having her records
blew the door open.

01:05:42.830 --> 01:05:46.584
I've just been offered this
Sri Lankan bronze head.

01:05:46.667 --> 01:05:49.086
Height: 18 centimeters.

01:05:49.170 --> 01:05:51.839
I've compared it with one I had,
it's the same.

01:05:51.922 --> 01:05:54.133
They're looking for the body,
no luck so far.

01:05:54.216 --> 01:05:57.136
All they found last week
were two land mines.

01:05:57.219 --> 01:06:00.306
What price would you be interested
to buy it at?

01:06:00.389 --> 01:06:02.808
Let me know, as I'll have to bargain.

01:06:02.892 --> 01:06:05.352
I've got one fresh out of the ground.

01:06:05.436 --> 01:06:07.146
We're cleaning the dirt off it now.

01:06:07.229 --> 01:06:08.564
Hold on to your hat!

01:06:08.647 --> 01:06:11.650
Just been offered
this 56-centimetre Buddha.

01:06:11.734 --> 01:06:13.611
Just excavated.

01:06:13.694 --> 01:06:16.739
It's still across the border,
but wow!

01:06:17.364 --> 01:06:18.824
This is smuggling 101.

01:06:18.908 --> 01:06:21.202
The looter finds it,
sells it to Latchford.

01:06:21.285 --> 01:06:25.039
Latchford's gonna turn around,
sell it in Manhattan to an art dealer.

01:06:25.539 --> 01:06:32.338
For an investigator, you don't often get
this smoking gun kind of material.

01:06:32.838 --> 01:06:38.803
We used the documentation that we received
from Nancy to indict Latchford.

01:06:40.012 --> 01:06:43.641
In 2019, Douglas Latchford
was finally indicted.

01:06:44.725 --> 01:06:46.811
Conspiracy to commit wire fraud,

01:06:46.936 --> 01:06:48.813
substantive wire fraud

01:06:48.938 --> 01:06:50.064
and smuggling.

01:06:50.940 --> 01:06:54.151
Conspiracy to commit an offense
against the United States.

01:06:54.276 --> 01:06:56.737
Entry of goods
by false statements

01:06:56.821 --> 01:07:00.116
and one count
of aggravated identity theft.

01:07:07.414 --> 01:07:11.669
There were so many museums
and dealers who dealt with him,

01:07:11.752 --> 01:07:14.338
and so if Latchford's being indicted,

01:07:15.214 --> 01:07:17.675
where's the shoe going to drop next?

01:07:17.758 --> 01:07:19.009
Possibly on them.

01:07:19.093 --> 01:07:23.848
And so museums are contacting us
and they're notifying us in advance,

01:07:23.931 --> 01:07:25.474
they're saying, "We have pieces,

01:07:25.558 --> 01:07:28.310
"we don't want to have agents come
storming into the museum.

01:07:28.394 --> 01:07:30.521
"We want to try
and get ahead of this."

01:07:30.729 --> 01:07:37.945
If I would know he bought the statues
and transferred them to somebody,

01:07:38.946 --> 01:07:42.992
I would not lead him
to go to the temple.

01:07:43.075 --> 01:07:47.496
I would like to be a very simple guide,
without him.

01:07:49.582 --> 01:07:51.625
Not to sell my statues.

01:07:51.750 --> 01:07:54.545
Not to transfer to the rich people.

01:07:58.632 --> 01:08:00.843
At the same time he's indicted,

01:08:00.968 --> 01:08:03.429
doctors find him to be incompetent.

01:08:03.596 --> 01:08:05.139
I'm not buying any of it.

01:08:05.222 --> 01:08:10.019
So I send agents to his hospital room
to actually inspect him

01:08:10.102 --> 01:08:14.773
and make sure he really is in
as poor shape as they say he was in.

01:08:14.899 --> 01:08:19.069
And they actually confirmed
that he was in pretty bad shape.

01:08:19.820 --> 01:08:23.616
Latchford took 30 pills a day.

01:08:23.616 --> 01:08:27.119
There's one time I shared the dinner table with him.

01:08:28.120 --> 01:08:28.954
I was like, "Oh,

01:08:29.914 --> 01:08:31.123
why so many?"

01:08:31.498 --> 01:08:32.791
he said, "I have a lot of problems".

01:08:34.168 --> 01:08:36.487
So the pills were prepared in a small cup.

01:08:36.503 --> 01:08:40.341
Not long after that, his health
continued to decline, and he passed.

01:08:42.092 --> 01:08:47.473
I would have liked for him
to have faced his day in court

01:08:47.556 --> 01:08:51.268
and answer for the crimes
that he committed.

01:08:55.022 --> 01:08:57.316
To find out he is a criminal,

01:08:57.399 --> 01:09:00.110
but I still like him,
I still admire him.

01:09:00.861 --> 01:09:03.614
He was always good to me and my family.

01:09:04.448 --> 01:09:08.369
I will pray for him this evening
when my wife comes back,

01:09:08.452 --> 01:09:10.663
and wish for his soul to be stable

01:09:11.247 --> 01:09:14.041
when he's going to be reborn again.

01:09:15.626 --> 01:09:19.338
Douglas Latchford's family made
an enormous amount of money from this,

01:09:19.463 --> 01:09:21.799
and they continue to hold onto that money.

01:09:21.882 --> 01:09:24.635
Julia Latchford
is Douglas Latchford's daughter.

01:09:24.718 --> 01:09:26.971
Julia signed an agreement with Cambodia

01:09:27.054 --> 01:09:31.267
to turn over hundreds of pieces
in the Latchford estate.

01:09:31.392 --> 01:09:34.645
It didn't make sense for Julia
to hold on to pieces

01:09:34.728 --> 01:09:37.523
that she couldn't sell
because they were tainted,

01:09:37.606 --> 01:09:40.317
and potentially she could be
in violation of law

01:09:40.401 --> 01:09:42.736
for criminal possession
of stolen property.

01:09:42.861 --> 01:09:45.739
You have the opportunity
to come out smelling like roses

01:09:45.823 --> 01:09:47.658
and unload all this dirty material.

01:09:47.741 --> 01:09:49.660
I think for her, it was a no-brainer.

01:09:50.119 --> 01:09:54.290
We had to go through a process
of working with a family representative.

01:09:54.373 --> 01:09:57.918
I went to London to drive with him
to the countryside.

01:09:58.419 --> 01:10:01.755
So I went with him
and we drove out to a pub.

01:10:01.922 --> 01:10:05.759
I took a photo of the pub
when I walked up,

01:10:06.427 --> 01:10:08.387
just thinking if I disappeared,

01:10:08.470 --> 01:10:11.223
somebody could check my iPhone
for that photo.

01:10:11.932 --> 01:10:16.937
And we went in to have lunch
and Julia was there.

01:10:17.354 --> 01:10:20.024
And she's like,
"Okay, you ready to see the gold?"

01:10:20.190 --> 01:10:22.901
She opens the trunk of the car,

01:10:23.027 --> 01:10:27.614
and she's got cardboard boxes in there,
four cardboard boxes,

01:10:27.698 --> 01:10:30.993
and it's the Angkorian jewels.

01:10:31.285 --> 01:10:35.164
It's the crowns and the bracelets
and the armlets

01:10:35.247 --> 01:10:37.374
from the Angkorian Empire

01:10:37.458 --> 01:10:40.711
in the back seat of her car.

01:10:40.794 --> 01:10:42.338
Not the back seat, the trunk.

01:10:42.463 --> 01:10:46.842
But she went and just opened everything
and held it up.

01:10:46.925 --> 01:10:50.721
Showing me, "This is an earring,
this is a bracelet."

01:10:51.597 --> 01:10:56.185
And I was deeply saddened and mortified

01:10:56.268 --> 01:11:00.272
that the treasures
of this great ancient empire

01:11:00.356 --> 01:11:05.652
were in the back trunk of a car
a couple hours outside of London.

01:11:39.895 --> 01:11:42.689
Sometimes there's no black and white.

01:11:42.773 --> 01:11:44.775
The idea that the looters

01:11:44.900 --> 01:11:47.778
come back to work with the government,

01:11:47.903 --> 01:11:50.072
they are back
to do a good thing,

01:11:50.489 --> 01:11:54.576
finally to rid themselves
from the bad karma.

01:12:01.375 --> 01:12:05.754
They were desperate.
So it's masterminds that I hate.

01:12:05.921 --> 01:12:11.827
The masterminds are to blame,
the ones who ordered from the top.

01:12:11.844 --> 01:12:16.682
The looting didn't come
directly from them.

01:12:17.724 --> 01:12:20.436
It came from Douglas Latchford.

01:12:25.315 --> 01:12:27.568
People can still do something good,

01:12:27.651 --> 01:12:30.904
even when they've done
something horrible in their life.

01:12:31.029 --> 01:12:33.949
But when they did that
when they were kids,

01:12:34.032 --> 01:12:37.911
they were in a very difficult position.

01:12:38.036 --> 01:12:40.456
It's remarkable, it's beautiful,

01:12:40.539 --> 01:12:44.626
and it's not something
I would've thought of when I started.

01:12:44.751 --> 01:12:48.130
I think it's a beautiful story
of redemption.

01:13:01.477 --> 01:13:03.854
The U.S. Attorney's Office
of Homeland Security

01:13:03.937 --> 01:13:08.025
and the Metropolitan Museum of Art
had been in negotiations

01:13:08.650 --> 01:13:11.236
over which pieces
would be returned,

01:13:11.945 --> 01:13:15.908
and it was a surprise to me
that all of a sudden,

01:13:15.991 --> 01:13:17.826
the Met just announced that

01:13:17.951 --> 01:13:22.915
we're going to return this batch
of their Cambodian antiquities.

01:13:25.459 --> 01:13:28.962
We are heading now
to Cambodia International Airport.

01:13:29.421 --> 01:13:34.510
We are going to get the sculpture today
back from New York.

01:13:35.385 --> 01:13:41.391
It's a big day for Cambodia,
and personally, I am very excited.

01:13:41.642 --> 01:13:42.809
I can't describe.

01:13:43.685 --> 01:13:47.773
You know, the dream is becoming reality.

01:14:12.714 --> 01:14:15.050
The Met have given back these 14,

01:14:15.467 --> 01:14:19.972
by and large, because they know
that they are connected to Latchford.

01:14:20.430 --> 01:14:22.975
If they thought
that these were not stolen,

01:14:23.058 --> 01:14:25.686
I think they would never
have given them back.

01:14:25.769 --> 01:14:28.814
I think they would have fought
for the rest of my life,

01:14:28.897 --> 01:14:31.358
for a couple of generations.

01:14:35.821 --> 01:14:38.824
They have done
something unprecedented,

01:14:38.949 --> 01:14:41.451
given back so many
to a country like Cambodia.

01:14:41.618 --> 01:14:46.081
But there's no admission,
there's no nothing.

01:14:46.248 --> 01:14:47.583
I think it's wrong.

01:14:47.666 --> 01:14:51.295
If they really want to sincerely
help Cambodia heal,

01:14:52.004 --> 01:14:54.715
they need to give
the provenance documents.

01:14:54.798 --> 01:14:56.883
They need to help us with the history.

01:14:57.467 --> 01:14:59.136
I believe that they know.

01:14:59.219 --> 01:15:01.054
They know the background.

01:15:01.138 --> 01:15:03.515
They know why
these are blood antiquities.

01:15:12.441 --> 01:15:14.026
It's raining so hard.

01:15:14.693 --> 01:15:18.822
Is it a sign of joy? Is it tears of joy?

01:15:38.091 --> 01:15:40.719
After so many decades, after war,

01:15:41.303 --> 01:15:44.640
and so much havoc
and damage in the country,

01:15:44.806 --> 01:15:48.268
I believe it's wonderful
that Cambodia is now being recognized

01:15:48.352 --> 01:15:50.270
as a leader for restitution.

01:15:50.354 --> 01:15:54.358
This is a beautiful, beautiful message
to the world.

01:16:34.898 --> 01:16:39.569
I am happy that they get returned.

01:16:39.569 --> 01:16:45.283
Although I can’t help, but I’m happy that they get returned
because they belong to our nation.

01:16:45.283 --> 01:16:50.997
I believe and I know that those
are the antiques of Khmer people.

01:16:56.837 --> 01:17:08.807
My grandparents told me that if I see the [statues]
returned back to Cambodia, it assures peacefulness.

01:17:09.015 --> 01:17:15.272
As they keep returning back,
I reflect that their words are true.

01:17:17.190 --> 01:17:21.069
Having visited the different temples
and seeing the empty spots,

01:17:21.153 --> 01:17:23.155
and seeing everything that was missing,

01:17:23.238 --> 01:17:26.283
it just made me realize
that there's a lot of work to do

01:17:26.408 --> 01:17:29.619
and there are a lot of pieces
out there still.

01:17:32.038 --> 01:17:36.626
I would like to express
my thanks to everyone

01:17:36.793 --> 01:17:42.007
who contributed
to try to find our ancestors.

01:17:42.132 --> 01:17:46.052
It's hard to express in human language.

01:17:53.643 --> 01:17:58.982
It is a beauty.
It is the hard work of the Khmer people.

01:17:59.232 --> 01:18:03.820
They come a thousand years ago
through the hard times.

01:18:03.904 --> 01:18:07.365
The darkness and the brightness
of our history.

01:18:07.449 --> 01:18:11.536
And so it's very important
for all Cambodian people

01:18:11.620 --> 01:18:14.498
that our ancestors come back home.

01:18:16.958 --> 01:18:19.711
In the beginning,
everything is always hard.

01:18:19.795 --> 01:18:24.633
So when you see progress,
you feel more optimistic.

01:18:25.342 --> 01:18:30.180
And I will bring my children
here to see.

01:18:30.305 --> 01:18:32.724
And I'm feeling very positive.

01:18:32.849 --> 01:18:34.934
Very positive right now.

01:18:34.935 --> 01:18:38.396
To see so many people
come together right now

01:18:38.480 --> 01:18:40.273
and do something positive,

01:18:40.357 --> 01:18:45.737
and to know that this has touched
so many peoples' hearts,

01:18:45.821 --> 01:18:48.114
it's incredible.

01:21:48.837 --> 01:21:55.385
You know, Cambodia,
we lived through war and genocide.

01:21:56.720 --> 01:22:00.140
If we are not focusing
on the positive side of life,

01:22:00.974 --> 01:22:03.351
we all are crazy.

01:22:10.066 --> 01:22:15.905
It's hard to move on if you focus
on the negative side of life.

01:22:21.327 --> 01:22:24.372
I know what it's like
to have no hope.

01:22:24.914 --> 01:22:27.834
I know what it's like to live in fear.

01:22:28.251 --> 01:22:31.171
You know, we are not all that.

01:22:33.173 --> 01:22:36.342
There was a time, many centuries ago,

01:22:36.426 --> 01:22:39.971
that we had built a great civilization.

01:22:43.391 --> 01:22:47.479
They have gone, but their work stays.

01:22:49.022 --> 01:22:52.525
Past, present, and future can connect.