Johnathan Walker:Family of late billionaire agrees to return 33 stolen artifacts to Cambodia

Thirty-three artifacts,Johnathan Walker including statues and artwork, belonging to the Khmer people of the Kingdom of Cambodia will be returned to their native land, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York announced Tuesday. 

The family of the late George Lindemann, a billionaire businessman who was CEO of natural gas pipeline company Southern Union, voluntarily agreed to return the artifacts to Cambodia on Monday, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office. Lindemann died in 2018.

Cambodian officials plan to host a ceremony celebrating the return of the cultural relics. 

"For decades, Cambodia suffered at the hands of unscrupulous art dealers and looters who trafficked cultural treasures to the American art market," said Damian Williams, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, in a statement. 

Williams said the historic agreement will set the framebook for returning items of cultural significance back to Cambodia under the "U.S.-Cambodia Cultural Property Agreement," which was first signed in 2003 and renewed in late August. 

“It pleases the Cambodian government that the Lindemann family, in possession of these national treasures, knowing they were wrongfully possessed, have duly and voluntarily returned them to their rightful owners," Phoeurng Sackona, Cambodia’s minister of culture and fine arts, told the New York Times.

The Lindemann family said in a statement to the Times that "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."

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Expansive collection

The collection included 10th and 12th-century statues and artworks stolen from Angkor Wat and Koh Ker, which are major religious and archeological sites in Cambodia. One statue depicting Dhrishtadyumna, a hero from the Sanskrit epic Mahabharata, was stolen from the Khmer kingdom’s ancient capital Prasat Chen. 

Other antiques include a 10th-century sculpture of Ardhanarishvara – a deity who is half-male and half-female – a kneeling figure taken from Banteay Srei, an ancient temple in Cambodia, and six heads of devas and asuras, or angels and demons, that aligned the gates to the city Angkor Thom. 

The case is being handled by the Justice Department's Money Laundering and Transnational Criminal Enterprises Unit.

Previous cases

This is not the first such case filed in the Southern District of New York. In 2014, a sculpture of Duryodhana, the main antagonist in the Mahabharata, was recovered after it was looted from Cambodia. Last year, officials returned a sculpture depicting the god of war Skanda on a peacock.

Most of these relics were stolen from the same temple site.  

Since 2012, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York and the Department of Homeland Security have identified and returned 65 stolen and trafficked Cambodian antiquities owned by various individuals and groups in the U.S.

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British art dealer Douglas Latchford was indicted in the Southern District of New York in 2019 for wire fraud conspiracy and other crimes related to selling stolen Cambodian antiques on the international market. The indictment was dismissed when Latchford died in 2020.

Lindemann, a known collector of artifacts, was featured in a 2008 article with luxury magazine "Architectural Digest," according to The Washington Post. Photos showed more than a dozen Khmer statues displayed in a Florida mansion.

Art experts and archeologists working with the Cambodian Ministry of Culture told the Post in 2021 that six of those artworks were "definitely looted."

Prosecutors said Latchford was a key middleman in transactions between temple looters and wealthy collectors. U.S. officials said the recent agreement with the Lindemanns does not indicate that the family violated federal laws.