Chasing the Ancient Stolen Statues of Cambodia

Summary

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Podcast Summary: Big Take – Chasing the Ancient Stolen Statues of Cambodia

Host: Wan Ha (Bloomberg)
Key Guests: Matthew Campbell (Bloomberg), Bradley Gordon (Cambodian restitution team)
Release Date: July 21, 2026
Duration: Approx. 24 minutes

Episode Overview

Chasing the Ancient Stolen Statues of Cambodia dives into the secretive world of Khmer artifact trafficking. The episode traces the journey of the thousand-year-old Duryodhana statue, looted from the Cambodian temple of Koh Ker amid decades of civil war, its path through the art world, and the global investigation that ultimately led to its return—and the broader movement to repatriate Cambodian cultural heritage.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Duryodhana Statue Surfaces ([01:40] – [04:59])

• Introduction to Duryodhana:

  • A sandstone warrior sculpture from the Khmer Empire, renowned for its artistry and historical significance.
  • Still, its most striking feature: it was "ready to leap into a duel," described as "one of the most amazing stone sculptures that's ever come out of Cambodia, and specifically of this remarkable ancient civilization called the Khmer Empire" (Matthew Campbell, [02:15]).

• Suspicious Provenance:

  • Listed for auction at Sotheby’s in New York in 2011 for up to $3 million—draws scrutiny due to its murky history.
  • No record since its appearance in 1975; broken feet discovered still at Koh Ker provided a crucial link.
  • US Federal investigators suspected it was looted during the civil war.

• Quote:

  • “When this piece arrived in New York City in 2010 for sale by Sotheby's, it had no feet... feet which matched it had been discovered at a temple site in Cambodia.” (Matthew Campbell, [03:26])

2. Cambodia’s Turbulent Past & the Looting of Artifacts ([04:59] – [06:58])

• Historical Context:

  • Cambodia’s civil war (1970s–1998) provided fertile ground for cultural looting; millions died, and chaos reigned.
  • All warring factions and opportunists participated in looting.
  • Art theft became a way to fund military campaigns.

• Quote:

  • “Wars run on bullets, they run on fuel, but they really run on money. You can't fight a war without money.” (Matthew Campbell, [06:16])
  • “One of the ways to fund yourself is to steal and sell ancient artworks... all sides in the civil war were engaged in this.” (Matthew Campbell, [06:40])

3. The Legal Hurdles to Repatriation ([07:17] – [08:21])

• Museums and International Law:

  • The UNESCO treaty (1970) is the benchmark: artifacts that left their home countries before 1970 are generally considered “safer” to own.
  • Proving whether Duryodhana left Cambodia before the cutoff was the thrust of the legal battle.
  • A British dealer, Douglas Latchford, is implicated, but his story changes, adding to the mystery.

• Quote:

  • “One of the critical components is you need to be able to show that looting or stealing this object was illegal in the country where it came from at the time it occurred.” (Matthew Campbell, [07:17])

4. US Investigators and the Trail in Cambodia ([09:09] – [12:48])

• Bradley Gordon’s Mission:

  • Lawyer in Phnom Penh, recruited by US DOJ, tasked to interview villagers and find witnesses.
  • The process was hampered by fear and silence due to the legacy of war.
  • Breakthrough: 'Daeduc' (aka Tuktik), a former child soldier turned looter, reveals firsthand evidence and an extensive network of hundreds of looters.

• Key Revelations:

  • Daeduc was a reflective figure, seeking some karmic redemption by aiding the investigation.
  • He identifies ‘Sia Ford’—honorific for Douglas Latchford—as the primary international buyer.
  • Latchford dictated what was to be stolen—specific styles or iconography—which influenced looters on the ground.

• Quotes:

  • “I think he really believed in karma... he wanted to do whatever he could to try to make things right.” (Bradley Gordon on Daeduc, [10:38])
  • “Latchford was essentially the interface between this looting supply chain... and the international market.” (Matthew Campbell, [12:48])

5. The Global Scale of the Trade ([12:58] – [13:54])

• Industrialized Looting:
  • Raids became ‘industrial scale’ in the 1990s—with construction equipment, dynamite, and even gun battles.
  • Artifacts trafficked through Thailand to Latchford, who had deep ties with global museums and private collectors.
  • Museums like the Met and even tech billionaires (e.g., Jim Clark) purchased Khmer art for millions.

6. The Reckoning: Legal Action and Returns ([16:51] – [21:20])

• Latchford’s Downfall:

  • Indicted in 2019; died in 2020 before facing trial.
  • Few criminal prosecutions; focus is mostly on object forfeiture and changing the behavior of museums and dealers.

• Sotheby's Settlement:

  • Sotheby’s returned Duryodhana to Cambodia after legal pressure ([18:20]).

• Quote:

  • “One of the criticisms of these investigations generally is that they don't involve enough criminal prosecution... but they have changed the incentives.” (Matthew Campbell, [17:42])

• Ongoing Restitution Work:

  • Bradley Gordon leads Cambodia’s effort, building a database of over 2,100 suspected looted pieces.
  • Successes: over 300 pieces repatriated, ongoing negotiations with museums and collectors.
  • Some institutions (e.g., the Met) have returned many pieces, though others are less cooperative.

• Quote:

  • “We have quite a few negotiations going on right now with private collectors around the world... And we're finding that many museums are willing to do the right thing. We do have a number ... very reluctant.” (Bradley Gordon, [20:37])

7. New Norms and Lasting Impact ([21:20] – [22:53])

• Changed Art Market:

  • National Museum in Phnom Penh is now “packed to the gills.”
  • Major Khmer pieces can hardly be sold openly anymore.
  • The inquiry into provenance has become the norm—prompting greater transparency in acquisitions.

• Quote:

  • “There is now very little art from this part of the world that is changing hands, at least openly.” (Matthew Campbell, [21:20])
  • “There are people who would basically say museums are by definition monuments to theft...” (Matthew Campbell, [21:49])

• Global Perspective:

  • Looting remains a problem in places facing conflict (Sudan, Ukraine, Ethiopia). Demand for antiquities keeps fueling the black market.

8. Meaning for Cambodians ([22:53] – [23:53])

• Restitution as Healing:

  • Repatriation is deeply emotional, akin to recovering lost family.
  • The process brings closure and reconnects Cambodia with its cultural past.

• Quote:

  • “For many Cambodians... it's like a return of a lost one... it's unbelievable how this has touched the hearts of so many people here and we can see how much it provides healing for the nation.” (Bradley Gordon, [23:03])

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Memorable Moments & Notable Quotes

• Matthew Campbell on war and looting:
  “Wars run on bullets, they run on fuel, but they really run on money. You can't fight a war without money.” ([06:16])

• Bradley Gordon on Daeduc’s motivation:
  “He didn't do this for anything, but, you know, just improving his chances of maybe a better next life.” ([10:38])

• Matthew Campbell on museum controversies:
  “There are people who would basically say museums are by definition monuments to theft, you know, and colonialism and looting. I don't totally agree... The big challenge, honestly, is that this is still going on.” ([21:49])

• Bradley Gordon on the meaning of restitution:
  “I can see that for many of the Cambodians, it's like a return of a lost one... it provides healing for the nation.” ([23:03])

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [01:40] – Introduction to Duryodhana and auction controversy
• [04:59] – Context: Cambodia’s civil war and art looting
• [07:17] – Legal hurdles of international art restitution
• [09:09] – Bradley Gordon’s investigation begins
• [10:38] – Confession and revelations from Daeduc, the looter
• [12:48] – The global network and Douglas Latchford’s role
• [16:51] – Indictment of Latchford, fallout, and Sotheby's settlement
• [19:41] – Tracking and returning Cambodia’s lost treasures
• [20:37] – Challenges with museums and collectors
• [21:20] – How the antiquities market is changing today
• [23:03] – Emotional importance of repatriation for Cambodians

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Conclusion

This compelling episode of Big Take Asia explores how the illicit trade in Cambodian antiquities not only funded war, but also left a nation cut off from its heritage. Through meticulous investigation and persistent legal action, a global web of looting has been exposed, leading to one of the art world's most successful restitution campaigns. More than the recovery of objects, it's a story about justice, remembrance, and the restoration of national identity.

Transcript

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[Bloomberg Audio Studios Announcer]

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[Narrator (Wan Ha)]

in the spring of 2011, an ancient statue from Cambodia was said to be auctioned at Sotheby's in New York. The five foot tall artifact, with its powerful chest and large round eyes, is known as the Dirodana.

[Matthew Campbell]

The Duryodhana is a thousand year old sandstone sculpture of a warrior from a Cambodian temple called Koh Ker.

[Narrator (Wan Ha)]

Matthew Campbell is a senior reporter and editor for Bloomberg businessweek. Though the figure was sculpted out of stone, it managed to capture movement as if the warrior was ready to leap in a duel.

[Matthew Campbell]

The object is significant artistically because it is one of the most amazing stone sculptures that's ever come out of Cambodia, and specifically of this remarkable ancient civilization called the Khmer Empire, which produced, among other things, Angkor Wat.

[Narrator (Wan Ha)]

Sotheby's was aiming to sell the sculpture for as much as $3 million. To collectors it was a masterpiece, but to US prosecutors who'd been tracking its sale, it was something else. Evidence.

[Matthew Campbell]

What was really significant about it from a legal perspective was no one had seen this object in a long time. It had last been published in 1975. There was no record of where it was before that.

[Narrator (Wan Ha)]

For decades, the Duryodana had seemingly vanished before resurfacing on the other side of the world. Records show that it was first sold in 1975 in London. Documents tracking its chain of custody beyond that were scant. But federal investigators who were looking into the statue had one clue they couldn't ignore.

[Matthew Campbell]

When this piece arrived in New York City in 2010 for sale by Sotheby's, it had no feet. Its feet have been broken off at the ankles. And through kind of a coincidence, feet which matched it had been discovered at a temple site in Cambodia.

[Narrator (Wan Ha)]

Investigators believed that the Duradana had been stolen. Ripped from an ancient site in Cambodia and working its way through the most exclusive tiers of the fine art world. On the day the statue was about to go under the hammer, Sotheby's unexpectedly pulled it from sale after federal agents warned the auction house the item could be stolen property. Meanwhile, authorities dug deeper into their case trying to prove it.

[Matthew Campbell]

So the Department of Justice went into this case with a pretty good idea of where this thing had come from, but not who had stolen it or when.

[Narrator (Wan Ha)]

Finding answers to those questions would send investigators on a far reaching hunt that lasted for more than a decade. That search has consequences for some of the world's wealthiest museums and collectors, with implications for a country whose art had been used to prop up a multimillion dollar industry.

[Matthew Campbell]

When federal prosecutors began working on this, they were of the view that they were looking at a long term criminal conspiracy which stretched from the killing fields of Cambodia all the way to the Upper east side of Manhattan.

[Narrator (Wan Ha)]

This is the big take Asia. From Bloomberg News, I'm Wan Ha. Every week we take you inside some of the world's biggest, biggest and most powerful economies and the markets, tycoons and businesses that drive this ever shifting region. Today on the show, how Cambodia's stolen gods got scattered around the world and the unlikely investigation that's helping to bring them home. For roughly 500 years, beginning in the 9th century, Cambodia sat at the heart of the Khmer empire. One of the most powerful civilizations of the pre modern world. Its rulers built monumental temples like Angkor Wat and filled them with grand sculptures in stone and bronze. But by the end of Cambodia's Civil War in 1998, many of those treasures were gone, looted during three decades of conflict and upheaval. And the country itself was in shambles. Roughly 2 million Cambodians, a quarter of the population, died in the few years that the Khmer Rouge was in power in the late 1970s. They were then ousted by Vietnamese forces. But fighting between insurgent groups continued for another 20 years.

[Matthew Campbell]

The Cambodian civil war went on very violently, very viciously, all the way to 1998. And wars run on bullets, they run on fuel, but they really run on money. You can't fight a war without money.

[Narrator (Wan Ha)]

Matthew Campbell is the author of the man who Stole the Gods, A True Story of War Obsession and a Global Art Conspiracy.

[Matthew Campbell]

And in Cambodia, one of the ways to fund yourself is to steal and sell ancient artworks. So all sides in the civil war were engaged in this. There were also just opportunistic thieves taking advantage of chaos who were not themselves competence in the war.

[Narrator (Wan Ha)]

And somewhere amid that chaos, the Dear Donna disappeared from Cambodia. Decades later, when Sotheby's tried to auction the statue in New York, the Cambodian government rang the alarm. It asked the US for help to recover it. But first prosecutors had to prove it had been stolen.

[Matthew Campbell]

One of the critical components is you need to be able to show that looting or stealing this object was illegal in the country where it came from at the time it occurred. In addition to national laws in the US and elsewhere, there is a treaty under the aegis of UNESCO, the United Nations Cultural Heritage Agency, which governs, or attempts to govern the movement of what they call cultural property, which is basically art and artifacts around the world. And the UNESCO treaty is complicated, but generally, in, for example, the world of big museums, there's a cutoff in 1970. So if you can show that an object left its country of origin before 1970, it's generally considered fairly safe to acquire.

[Narrator (Wan Ha)]

In the case of the Duradana, the where was clear enough. Proving the when would be harder. At the time, Sotheby's was confident the Dior Donna was out of Cambodia. Before the 1970 cutoff, there was a

[Matthew Campbell]

pretty strong impression by the people at Sotheby's that it had been in the possession pre1975 of a very prominent art dealer, a British man named Douglas Latchford. And actually, in Sotheby's internal deliberations, before it agreed to sell this thing, they had reached out to Latchford. He had initially said, yes, I did have it. Then he changed his story and said, actually, I didn't. So the whereabouts of this thing were kind of a mystery. This is an enormous object. It weighs hundreds and hundreds of pounds. It had obviously been removed somewhat violently from the place where it came from. Who took it out? How did they get it to the border

[Narrator (Wan Ha)]

to UNRAVEL that mystery authorities needed someone on the ground in Cambodia.

[Bradley Gordon]

What happened in 2012? I was sitting in my office in Phnom Penh. I was scrolling through the Internet, and I came across an op ed, and it was about the looting of Cambodia.

[Narrator (Wan Ha)]

That's Bradley Gordon, an American lawyer living in the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh. The op ed he came across struck a chord, so he reached out to the authors.

[Bradley Gordon]

Shortly afterwards, I found myself getting hired by the Department of Justice out of New York, the prosecutors there who were working on the Dury Adana case, and they said, hey, you actually could be helpful to us. Maybe go out and collect some testimonies of villagers and see if you can find an eyewitness.

[Narrator (Wan Ha)]

At first, Brant thought the assignment would be fairly straightforward. But in a country still living with the legacy of war and genocide, finding those answers would prove much harder than he expected.

[Bradley Gordon]

When we went to the village, the first stop, hardly anyone talked to us. They didn't tell us anything.

[Narrator (Wan Ha)]

But Brad and his team, some he hired from the village, kept at it. They spent months returning to villages around Koke, the temple complex where the Duryodana was taken. And after months of interviews, their search led them to a former child soldier in the Khmer Rouge, One who didn't just have a lead, but who claimed he had stolen more than a thousand Cambodian artifacts. His name was Daeduc or Tuktik.

[Bradley Gordon]

We told him he would not be arrested, that we would make sure that people he told us about, they were not going to get arrested either. And I think he really believed in karma. He didn't do this for anything, but, you know, just improving his chances of maybe a better next life. And I think he was very aware of how wrong it was, what he had done. And he was a very thoughtful person in many ways and very reflective. And I think for him, he saw what an incredible crime this was against the Cambodian people. And I think he wanted to do whatever he could to try to make things right.

[Narrator (Wan Ha)]

Daeduc told Brad he built a network of hundreds of looters that targeted ancient sites across Cambodia. The artifacts were then moved through Thailand and into the international art market. Deduc often worked with one particular broker, and he knew that a large chunk of the works were sold to one client. Here's Matthew Campbell again.

[Matthew Campbell]

He understood that there was a Westerner, a man in Bangkok, who Tuktik referred to as Sia Ford. Sia is a Thai honorific. It means lord or something like that.

[Narrator (Wan Ha)]

Lord Ford was Douglas Latchford, the collector who changed his story when Sotheby's first asked about the Giordana de Duc said he had been supplying Latch. That revelation suggested that Latchford's influence extended all the way from the international art market down the chain to the people digging artifacts out of the ground.

[Matthew Campbell]

Latchford was not himself a looter. We don't have any evidence of him in a temple ripping things out. He was a voracious buyer. And Brad also learned that Latchford had sent instructions up the chain. He would tell people what he wanted, what kind of artworks he was looking for. He would say he was looking for bronzes in a certain style or a certain kind of Hindu iconography. That information would reach looters in the field and they would go try and get it.

[Narrator (Wan Ha)]

Rad had helped uncover a sprawling trafficking network that looted Cambodia's ancient sites and fed a global demand for Khmer antiquities.

[Matthew Campbell]

There were looting crews in the field all over Cambodia, all through the civil war. Actually, the most intense phase of looting was in the mid to late 1990s. You had these industrial scale raids on certain sites, and I use the word industrial very deliberately. We're talking construction equipment, dynamite, occasionally gun battles between rival looting crews who were after the same stuff. These looting crews would then move artworks to the Thai border, where there were brokers who would get them over the border and to Bangkok where Lashford was waiting. And Latchford was essentially the interface between this looting supply chain I just described and the international market. So he had impeccable relationships with big buyers, both privately and with big museums like the Metropolitan in New York. And he was a trusted supplier to all these people.

[Narrator (Wan Ha)]

Will Cambodia recover what was lost and what the discovery means for museums and collectors around the world? That's after the break.

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[Narrator (Wan Ha)]

American lawyer Bradley Gordon helped federal prosecutors unfold uncover a trafficking network that systematically looted Cambodia's ancient temples and funneled their treasures onto the international art market. Then came the reckoning in 2019, eight years after prosecutors first challenged the sale of the Giordana at a Sotheby's auction, they indicted the man they believe sat at the center of that network, British art dealer Douglas Latchford. As we allege in that indictment, Lashford lied about the provenance of the Cambodian antiquities he was selling in order to cover up the fact that they were looted. These artifacts included the Deir Adana and many other Khmer antiquities, but the case never reached trial. Latchford died in 2020 at age 88. Here's Bloomberg's Matthew Campbell.

[Matthew Campbell]

In terms of criminal consequences, there have not been that many, honestly. Latchford was charged another dealer In New York, Nancy Weiner was charged. She ultimately pleaded guilty and did not do any jail time in exchange for cooperation with law enforcement. One of the criticisms of these investigations generally is that they don't involve enough criminal prosecution that it's mostly about what they call forfeiture, taking objects rather than trying to put people in jail. But nonetheless, they have changed the incentives. They have succeeded in significantly reducing the demand for works like this.

[Narrator (Wan Ha)]

As for the Girudana, Sotheby's settled its case with the US and agreed to send back the statute to Cambodia.

[Matthew Campbell]

I am much honored to represent the Kingdom of Cambodia.

[Narrator (Wan Ha)]

Here's Cambodian Deputy Prime Minister Suk an receiving the statue at a press conference in 2014.

[Matthew Campbell]

To receive and bring the statue of Diorodana back to our homeland where he belong.

[Narrator (Wan Ha)]

But that was over a decade ago. And the Deiryodana is just one of thousands of artifacts believed to have been stolen. Many remain scattered across museums, auction houses and private collections around the world.

[Matthew Campbell]

It's very hard to value them because, of course, the price of an artwork or of any asset is what someone will pay. There's no mark to market here, but we can say with confidence that Certainly by the late 90s, early 2000s, the best pieces were selling for seven figure prices, sometimes five or six million dollars each. So the size of the whole market would be hundreds of millions. You know, nothing like the market for, say, modern paintings or old masters, but a significant part of the art world, we know that one Silicon Valley billionaire, Jim Clark, co founder of Netscape, he spent about $35 million on these pieces.

[Narrator (Wan Ha)]

After the Giordana case exposed how that trade worked, a new challenge emerged, figuring out where all the looted objects ended up. Bradley Gordon is doing that work to this day. In 2018, the Cambodian government appointed him to lead a restitution team tasked with tracking down the artifacts.

[Bradley Gordon]

We're doing a lot of work, for example, at Ta Prohm, which is a very famous temple at Angkor, the one that was in Angelina Jolie's movie Tomb Raider.

[Narrator (Wan Ha)]

Brad and his team have been interviewing experts, guards, villagers and former looters for years. They've compiled a database with more than 2100 objects they believe were likely looted from Cambodia. Many have ties to Douglas Latchford. Some are currently housed in museums like New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art and the British Museum in London. Roughly another thousand or so are believed to be in private collections.

[Bradley Gordon]

We have quite a few negotiations going on right now with private collectors around the world, and then we're talking to more and More museums. And we're finding that many museums are willing to do the right thing. We do have a number of museums that are very reluctant.

[Narrator (Wan Ha)]

According to Brad, at least 300 looted Khmer artifacts have returned to Cambodia in the past decade as a result of his team's work and joint efforts with the US Government. The Met, for example, has returned more than a dozen pieces to Cambodia. Matt says those returns have transformed Cambodia's recovery effort from a handful of isolated victories into one of the most successful repatriation campaigns in the art world.

[Matthew Campbell]

Actually, the National Museum in Phnom Penh is packed to the gills. There is now very little art from this part of the world that is changing hands, at least openly. It would now be very hard, certainly in any public way to sell a major piece from Cambodia without a lot of questions being asked.

[Narrator (Wan Ha)]

The investigation has also reshaped how museums, dealers and collectors think about provenance and stolen art.

[Matthew Campbell]

There are people who would basically say museums are by definition monuments to theft, you know, and colonialism and looting. I don't totally agree. I think one thing that is striking is that there appears to be a universal urge when a country is on the rise to obtain the treasures of other people. This is why there are Egyptian obelisks in Rome. You know that, and that goes back 2,000 years. The big challenge, honestly, is that this is still going on. It's happening in lots of other places. Every time a country falls apart, one of the very first things that happens is the museums are hit, archaeological sites are hit, historical monuments are hit, often by people who know what they're doing, who know what to take, who take the high quality saleable objects. Most recently in Sudan, in Ethiopia, in Ukraine, there have been very large scale thefts of art and artifacts because there is a market, people want them and they will pay for them.

[Narrator (Wan Ha)]

For many Cambodians, these aren't simply relics of the past or, or works of art. And Brad says that's become evident to him as some of the pieces return home.

[Bradley Gordon]

I can see that for many of the Cambodians, it's like a return of a lost one. It's something they, you know, they've been yearning for. They've been thinking about somebody they lost during the war and the parents of these statues, to them they're living. And I feel many times it's like welcoming a family member, a long lost relationship, family member coming home. And I, I do think it brings back many, many memories of what Cambodia was like before the war and what happened during the war. It's unbelievable how this has touched the hearts of so many people here and we can see how how much it provides healing for the nation.

[Narrator (Wan Ha)]

This is the Big Take Asia from Bloomberg News. I'm Juan Ha. To get more from the Big Take and unlimited access to all of bloomberg.com, subscribe [e-mail] podcastoffer if you liked the episode, make sure to subscribe and review the Big Take Asia. Wherever you listen to podcasts, it really helps people find the show. Thanks for listening. See you next time.

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