Prosecutors say a sacred work known as “Skanda on a Peacock” was sold at one point by Douglas A.J. Latchford, a collector who was accused of trafficking stolen artifacts.

 

U.S. prosecutors in Manhattan are planning to return to Cambodia a 10th-century Khmer sandstone statue said to have been plundered more than 20 years ago from a temple there.

 

In a complaint filed on Thursday in Federal District Court in Manhattan, the prosecutors described how the statue was stolen by a former member of the Khmer Rouge, then wound up in the hands of an art collector who traversed Cambodia’s war-ravaged jungles in the 1970s and was later accused of smuggling stolen relics.

 

The statue was taken in 1997 from a temple called Prasat Krachap, at Koh Ker, which was the capital of the ancient Khmer Empire from 928 to 944 A.D., the complaint said.

 

read more https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/16/arts/design/skanda-peacock-antiquity-return-cambodia.html

Must be on the same plane as the US Pfizer donation! No jumper cables!

An utterly meaningless gesture in these times.