Investigations from the Pandora Papers show how indicted antiquities looter and smuggler Douglas Latchford also owned offshore trusts to hold his money and art, and also suggest he continued to trade in antiquities as up to as recently as 2018. Many excellent pieces of reporting, which I will index on this page.
In 2019, the United States indicted Douglas Latchford, an Englishman who had long lived in Thailand, of trafficking antiquities looted from countless Cambodian sacred sites.
The case came seven years after Latchford was publicly linked to antiquities trafficking and after some in the art world had come to see him as too risky to deal with.
The Cambodian government is now working to recover its stolen heritage, has secured the return of several Latchford pieces from prominent museums and has been promised many more from his private collection. But hundreds more relics — maybe thousands — once owned by Latchford haven’t been found.
The Pandora Papers files obtained by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists reveal two secret offshore trusts that Latchford used to hold money and art: the Skanda and the Siva trusts, based in the secrecy haven of Jersey. Prompted by the revelation, a cross-newsroom reporting team from the ICIJ, The Washington Post, The Guardian, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and Spotify embarked on a hunt for items with Latchford links that had passed through Latchford or had traveled through other means into the collections of museums and private individuals.
- How we tracked ancient Cambodian antiquities to leading museums and private galleries | ICIJ, 05 October 2021
- Pandora Papers: Global hunt for looted treasures leads to offshore trusts | Anchorage Daily News (Washington Post), 05 October 2021
- Art Dealer Used Offshore Accounts to Trade Looted Antiquities, Pandora Papers Say | Hyperallergenic, 05 October 2021
- How artefacts linked to indicted dealer ended up in Australian galleries | The Guardian, 05 October 2021
- Offshore loot: how notorious dealer used trusts to hoard Khmer treasures | The Guardian, 05 October 2021
- Pandora Papers reveal Sydney art dealer’s connections to alleged art trafficker Douglas Latchford | ABC News, 05 October 2021
- The Pandora Papers Leak Reveals How the Late Dealer Douglas Latchford Used Offshore Accounts to Sell Looted Cambodian Antiquities | ArtNet News, 05 October 2021
- Plundered art held by the Denver Art Museum revealed in Pandora Papers’ exposé of billionaire finances | Colorado Sun, 08 October 2021
- National Gallery named as holding more looted artworks | TheRioACT, 14 October 2021
