New York, 19 April 2012
The controversy surrounding the Duryodhana, a Khmer statue dating from 10th century, continues. Statue of a Khmer warrior, which has been the property of a Belgian collector since 1975, was removed from a sale at Sotheby’s at the last minute at the end hof February 2011 after a claim by the Cambodian government, with the support of the United States and UNESCO. It would appear that there is reason to believe that the statue was stolen from the Prasat Chen temple in Koh Ker in the early 1970s, when Cambodia was in the midst of a civil war. It has an estimated value of between $2 and $3 million dollars.
The American government had, until the beginning of the month of April 2012, demanded the seizure of the work, but a Manhattan judge decided that it should stay in Sotheby’s possession. This was partly because at this point in the enquiry the auction house was not suspected of any fraudulent activity, and also because moving the statue risked damaging it.
For its party, Sotheby’s maintains that the sale of the piece on its premises was completely legal under both Cambodian and American law, underlining that the actual owner had official property papers issued over forty years ago, and that it had been acting in good faith. Furthermore, the auction house pointed out that the apparent the case for theft was based on only a few signs, and that realistically it would be impossible to prove when the statue was taken from its plinth, and it what circumstances.
On the other hand, several voices have been raised condemning Sotheby’s, questioning the auction house’s apparent “good faith” concerning the sale of the statue. British archaeologist Paul Barford wrote the following on his blog dedicated to the repatriation of stolen works:
“What does it mean “in good faith”? How can you buy something, identifiably (by style) from Cambodia, freshly broken off at the bottom, from a country where the news is full of reports every day of the brutal war going on there? How can it be a “good faith” purchase if the seller does not say how and when it left the country where it was obtained? Where there is no export licence? I fail to see how that actually qualifies as a good faith purchase any more than a cheap iPad in its original box (“only a little shop soiled”) but no documentation bought from a guy (“he looked decent enough, in a suit, not a hoodie”) two days after the London riots.”
According to legal information site Enlawdigest.com, Sotheby’s directors will face further investigation on 20 June 2012.