NY antiquities arrest highlights illicit Cambodia trade

Gallery accused of using laundering process to cover up litany of offences involving plundering of Southeast Asian art

Anadolu Agency | 23 December 2016

PHNOM PENH

The plundering of Southeast Asian art is again under the microscope after a New York woman was accused of having handled and sold looted artifacts in a laundering scheme spanning more than 16 years.

On Friday, the Phnom Penh Post cited a court complaint that accused Nancy Wiener, who runs an eponymous gallery in New York, of using "a laundering process" to commit a litany of offences.

She is accused of using restoration services to hide damage from illegal excavations, straw purchases at auction houses to create sham ownership histories, and the creation of false provenance to predate international laws of patrimony prohibiting the exportation of looted antiquities since at least 1999.

The court complaint highlighted the case of a 10th-century Buddha statue believed to have originated in either Cambodia or Thailand, that was seized from Wiener's gallery in March.

Kong Vireak, director of the Cambodia National Museum, told Anadolu Agency on Friday that Wiener’s name had been on his radar for some time “because she is among the top art dealers”.

Her arrest was “good news for us, because of course we have worked very hard… to return back artifacts and this takes time,” he said.

“When they need to arrest… art criminals dealing like this it’s very good news.”

He said Cambodian art and artifacts continue to be in high demand, but it is not known how many, if any, such relics were in Weiner's possession at the time of her arrest this week.

Decades of conflict has seen statues of various mythical figures hacked from their plinths in a number of pre-Angkorian temples across Cambodia.

Some have ended up in museums or auction houses and a number have been returned.