New York. District prosecutors in Manhattan, New York, announced 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.
“We are continuing to investigate the wide-ranging trafficking networks that continue to target Southeast Asian antiquities. While we have made significant progress and have dismantled several prominent networks, there is clearly still much more work to do,” Bragg was quoted as saying in the statement.
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.
Consul General Winanto Adi of the Indonesian Consulate General in New York attended the recent repatriation ceremony.
“My sincerest appreciation towards the New York District Attorney’s office and all related parties for their tireless effort to recover the antiquities. Not only it reflects the closeness of Indonesia and the United States, the repatriation of the antiquities also serves as a precious gift for the celebration of the 75th anniversary of diplomatic relations between Indonesia and the US,” Winanto said in a statement.
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.
