Ancient ‘Shiva Triad’ and Other Stolen Artifacts Are Returned To Cambodia By The US

New York: American networks of merchants and traffickers stole, sold, or unlawfully moved thirty antiques, and on Friday, New York prosecutors said that they had sent them back to Cambodia and Indonesia.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said that the antiques were estimated to be worth $3 million in total.

 

In two recent repatriation ceremonies, Bragg declared in a statement that he had returned 27 items—three to Jakarta and one to Phnom Penh—including a stone bas-relief depicting two royal figures from the Majapahit empire (the 13th and 16th centuries) that had been stolen from Indonesia and a bronze image of the Hindu deity Shiva (also known as the “Shiva Triad”) that had been taken from Cambodia.

Bragg charged American Nancy Wiener and Indian-American art dealer Subhash Kapoor with smuggling the antiques illegally.

The US Justice Department has been looking into Kapoor for more than ten years under the code name “Hidden Idol” because he is alleged to have operated a network that trafficked in stolen goods from Southeast Asia for sale at his Manhattan gallery.

After being detained in Germany in 2011, Kapoor was returned to India, where he was prosecuted and given a 13-year jail term in November 2022.

In response to a US prosecution alleging that he conspired to trade in stolen artwork, Kapoor refuted the allegations.

“We are continuing to investigate the wide-ranging trafficking networks that target Southeast Asian antiquities,” Bragg said in the release.

“There is clearly still much more work to do.”

After being found guilty in 2021 of trafficking in stolen art, Wiener attempted to sell the Shiva sculpture but ultimately gave it to the Denver (Colorado) Museum of Art in 2007.

In 2023, the antiquity was taken by the courts in New York.

Under Bragg’s leadership, the Antiquities Trafficking Unit has retrieved about 1,200 artifacts worth over $250 million that were pilfered from over 25 nations.

Being a significant center for human trafficking, New York has seen the seizure of multiple pieces of artwork from collectors and institutions in recent years, including the esteemed Metropolitan Museum of Art.