New York district attorney accuses two prominent art dealers of the illegal trafficking of antiquities worth $3m.
Prosecutors in New York City have announced that they returned to Cambodia and Indonesia 30 antiquities that were looted, sold or illegally transferred by networks of American antiquities dealers and traffickers.
The antiquities were valued at a total of $3m, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said in a statement on Friday.
Bragg said he had returned 27 pieces to Phnom Penh and three to Jakarta in two recent repatriation ceremonies, including a bronze statue of the Hindu deity Shiva, which was looted from Cambodia, and a stone bas-relief sculpture of two royal figures from the Majapahit empire, which reigned between the 13th and 16th centuries, that was stolen from Indonesia.
Bragg accused American art dealers Subhash Kapoor and Nancy Wiener of participating in the illegal trafficking of the antiquities.
American-Indian Kapoor – who was accused of running a network that trafficked items stolen in Southeast Asia and put them on sale in his Manhattan gallery – has been the target of a United States justice investigation dubbed “Hidden Idol” for more than a decade.
Kapoor was arrested in Germany in 2011 and then sent to India where he stood trial and was sentenced in November 2022 to 13 years in prison.
Responding to a US indictment for conspiracy to traffic in stolen works of art, Kapoor denied the charges.
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