PHNOM PENH - A billionaire family in the United States will return more than 30 looted ancient artefacts to Cambodia after agreeing it “wrongfully possessed” the treasures, the Cambodian government said on Wednesday.
The years of civil war followed by the rule of the genocidal Khmer Rouge rule were a time when historical sites were looted with near-impunity in Cambodia, which is famed for its Angkor Wat temple complex.
Officials said the objects, some dating back at least 1,200 years to the Khmer Empire, were purchased over several decades by George Lindemann, a gas and oil executive and Palm Beach, Florida, art collector who died in 2018 at age 82.
While the items are hard to value, Cambodian investigators said Lindemann is believed to have paid at least $20 million for them, based on their research into known sales of Khmer antiquities.
The deal comes nearly three years after US government investigators began looking into the Lindemann collection at the request of the Cambodian government. US federal officials said in a statement that the return was voluntary.
Many of the pieces are thought to date back to the Khmer Empire, which sprawled across much of modern-day Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam and Laos between the 9th and 15th centuries.
A trove of stolen artefacts has been sent back to Cambodia in recent years from Western museums and private collectors.
Now, 33 items from the Lindemann private collection will be “voluntarily” returned to Cambodia, the ministry of arts and culture in Phnom Penh said on Wednesday.
The move “sets an excellent and proper example for other museums and private collectors … to follow and return our national treasures", Minister of Culture and Fine Arts Phoeurng Sackona said.
The government did not say when the items would arrive in Cambodia.
They include a reclining Vishnu and Ardhanarishvara sculpture — believed to be from the remote northern ancient city of Koh Ker — which witnesses say was looted in the 1990s, according to the official statement.
“Having purchased these items from dealers that we assumed were reputable, we were saddened to learn how they made their way to the market in the United States,” The New York Times quoted the Lindemann family as saying in a statement.
Last month, the National Gallery of Australia said it would return three sculptures to Cambodia after an investigation found they were likely to have been “illegally exported”.
The bronze sculptures from the 9th to 10th century were bought for $1.5 million in 2011 by the British art dealer Douglas Latchford, who was later “convincingly implicated in the illegal trade of antiquities”, the gallery said.
Latchford died in Bangkok in 2020.
In 2019, a year before Latchford died, American prosecutors accused him in an indictment of having “built a career out of the smuggling and illicit sale of priceless Cambodian antiquities, often straight from archaeological sites”.
In 2021, Latchford’s daughter agreed to return more than 100 statues and dozens of smaller treasures that had been hoarded by the dealer in his Bangkok and London homes.