JakartaGlobe-Apr 27
District prosecutors in Manhattan, New York, announced Friday that they have returned three antiquities to Indonesia and 27 others to Cambodia.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin L Bragg Jr. said the pieces, collectively valued at nearly $3 million, “were recovered pursuant to multiple ongoing investigations into trafficking networks targeting Southeast Asian antiquities.” A statement from the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office identifies alleged trafficker Subhash Kapoor and convicted trafficker Nancy Wiener. The Indonesian antiquities include the Stone Relief, which “stands out as a rare example of material culture from the Majapahit Empire (1293-1527), one of the most powerful and influential empires in Southeast Asia’s history”, the office said. The relief depicts two seated royal figures, a lady and a man, surrounded by stylized foliage and holding round objects in their hands, which may be the Maja fruit for which the empire was named. The Stone Relief was recovered from a Kapoor-owned storage unit. The District Attorney’s Antiquities Trafficking Unit has investigated Kapoor and his co-conspirators for the alleged illegal looting, exportation, and sale of artifacts from numerous countries in South and Southeast Asia for over a decade. They allegedly smuggled looted antiquities into Manhattan and sold the pieces through Kapoor’s Madison Avenue-based gallery, Art of the Past. From 2011 to 2023 the district attorney’s office and the Homeland Security Investigations recovered more than 2,500 items allegedly trafficked by Kapoor and his network. The office said the total value of the pieces recovered exceeds $143 million. Read more at: https://jakartaglobe.id/news/us-returns-antiquities-to-indonesia-amid-probe-into-trafficking-networks
