Prosecutors File Arguments in Effort to Return Cambodian Statue

A 2011 Sotheby’s catalog shows a thousand-year-old statue believed to be from the Koh Ker temple in Cambodia.

August 21, 2012
By TOM MASHBERG
The New York Times

Federal prosecutors seeking to repatriate a 10th century statue to Cambodia filed court papers Monday accusing Sotheby’s of knowing the sculpture “was an important piece of cultural property that had been stolen” from a remote temple complex when the auction house put the massive sandstone artifact up for sale in March 2011.

In June, Sotheby’s had asked a federal judge in Manhattan to dismiss the U.S. government’s civil action to force the return of the statue of a Hindu warrior that was originally located at a temple site in Koh Ker.

Sotheby’s has argued that Cambodia never declared ownership of the statue before the auction house sought to sell it for as much as $3 million on behalf of its Belgian owner and that no one has provided proof the item was stolen.

In their new filing, the prosecutors included statements from two heritage law experts who said that, under Cambodian and British law, the statue should be treated as stolen property.

One expert, Matthew Rendall, said the statue is covered under Cambodian statutes, royal orders and decrees dating to the early 1900s that declare such items to be the “exclusive” and “immovable” property of the government. Mr. Rendall noted five occasions between 1985 and 1997 when Sotheby’s returned sculptures to Cambodia after claims they had been looted sometime after 1970.

Sotheby’s says the sculpture could have been spirited away any time during its thousand-year history and was bought in good faith by the husband of its current owner in 1975 from a London dealer.

Experts cited by the United States and Cambodian governments insist the statue was removed more recently. The say it was too remotely located and too heavy – more than 600 pounds — to have been carried off until adequate roads were built into the region sometime after 1960.