Douglas Latchford Collection

Douglas Latchford Collection

In 2021, the daughter of indicted antiquities trafficker Douglas Latchford agreed to return 125 Khmer objects from her father's private collection to Cambodia along with Champa sculptures that were returned to Vietnam.

The objects, valued at USD $50 million, are said to be part of the most important private collections of artifacts from Cambodia’s 1,000-year-old Khmer Dynasty ever amassed.

The returns by Julia Latchford Copleston (also known by her Thai name, Nawapan Kriangsak) were part of Latchford's remaining private collection, stored at his homes in Bangkok and London. They are related to, but separate from, the various repatriations of objects that Latchford sold or donated to museums and galleries around the world.

Latchford was criminally indicted by the U.S. in 2019 but died in 2020 before he could stand trial. Copleston's agreement to repatriate the collection she inherited to Cambodia was deemed by some as an act of altruism, but came as U.S. authorities continued to demand the seizure of her father's assets, which were amassed over decades of trafficking stolen Khmer sculpture in the wake of Khmer Rouge violence.

Copleston's role in her father's business came to light in the Pandora Papers, a leak of offshore banking records that revealed two trusts that Latchford had used to transfer assets to family members. The ICIJ's investigation of those trusts found that three months after U.S. investigators began linking Latchford to looted artifacts, he and family members set up the Skanda and Siva trusts (named after the Hindu gods) on the Island of Jersey, a secrecy haven in the Channel Islands between England and France. The Skanda Trust held Latchford’s antiquities collection and other assets, which were later transferred to the Siva Trust.

Before his death, Latchford intended to use the collection as a bargaining chip in an effort to gain legal immunity for himself, family members and Emma Bunker, according to a 2018 memo addressed to the U.S. ambassador to Cambodia that was obtained by ICIJ.

Copleston sought to excuse her father's collecting practices as being of "a different era," and said she returned the collection “because she had become convinced that it was the right thing to do.” Investigators and heritage crime researchers have questioned the lack of public apology or penalties associated with the return, which represents one of the largest-scale repatriations to a single country, especially in Southeast Asia.

125

Sculpture – statues, carvings, bronzes, reliefs, figurines

Jewelry – bracelets, rings, personal decoration

Khmer

Cambodia

Vietnam

Damien Huffer

Jason Felch