Among the vast cache of leaked papers published this week by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) lies evidence of the extraordinary lengths taken by antiquities dealer Douglas J Latchford to conceal items he acquired during decades of looting and trafficking in Cambodian artefacts.

Previously undisclosed documents reveal that Latchford and his family controlled secret trusts in offshore tax havens. According to Latchford’s family, these were set up for tax and estate planning purposes. But an extensive report published in The Washington Post suggests the first of two Jersey-domiciled trusts controlled by Latchford and his family was set up in June 2011 - just three months after U.S. authorities began investigating his links to looted artefacts.

Offshore companies and trusts based in tax havens can provide a high degree of protection from prosecutors seeking to recover assets.

Named after the Hindu god Skanda, the Skanda Trust held substantial financial assets, as well as a London property and Latchford’s collection of antiquities, including scores of bronzes and other religious figures worth millions of pounds. At a later date, the family’s assets in Skanda Trust were transferred into another Jersey-based trust named after the Hindu god Siva.

Unravelling and repatriating any looted objects that may lie sheltered within these trusts will be complicated as the trustee for both entities is a British Virgin Islands-registered ‘private trust company’ – another layer of protection added by Latchford.

For many years Douglas Latchford, a dual citizen of Thailand and the UK, enjoyed a reputation as a prominent dealer and collector in Southeast Asian art and antiquities. His obsession for collecting Khmer treasures, mostly Hindu and Buddhist sculptures, began in the 1970s. For the next forty years he sold, donated or brokered Khmer objects to leading collectors and museums around the world. He was also a major supplier of Cambodian merchandise for auction houses and dealers, including the British dealer Spink & Son. As the author of three books on Khmer antiquities, he was often called upon to identify and authenticate Khmer works of art.

However, these activities masked a very different pattern of fraud and illicit art trafficking. Latchford was a key player in the systematic looting of ancient Cambodian antiquities, sourcing legitimate treasures from unauthorised excavations, looters and smuggling networks. During the period from the mid-1960s to the 1990s when Cambodia was blighted by civil war and the genocide of the Khmer Rouge regime, the country’s temple complexes suffered from widespread, organised looting. Artefacts could be picked up by looters and smugglers for a fraction of their value in the West and Latchford, according to prosecutors, was at the heart of this illicit trade.

To conceal the true origins of his merchandise, he misrepresented the provenance of objects that he sold, falsifying  their invoices and shipping documents. The books he wrote were used to legitimise looted objects, before selling them on to major collectors.

Investigations into Latchford’s trading activities continued for eight years before he was finally indicted by the U.S. Justice Department in November 2019. Prosecutors demanded the return of “any and all property” derived from his illicit trafficking, including all financial proceeds from his sales. But before standing trial and before his assets could be traced, Latchford died.

His daughter, Julia Latchford, who is a beneficiary of the Jersey trusts along with her husband Simon Copleston, announced in January this year that she would repatriate 125 antiquities to Cambodia, a collection valued at around $50 million. This donation doesn’t draw on any of the Latchford-linked objects now in public or private collections. Described as the biggest repatriation of relics in the region’s history, a New York Times article announced the gift “honours, if not absolves her father”.

However, this week’s leaked papers tell a different story. They appear to confirm that Latchford had proposed this donation in 2018 to the U.S. ambassador in Cambodia in return for helping him and his family gain protection from criminal prosecution.

In a statement to the ICIJ, Julia Latchford’s attorneys explained she was only made aware of her father’s illegal activities after his death. She also maintains the Jersey trusts “included multiple family assets”; they were not set up to conceal the origin of Latchford’s collection nor the proceeds from his sales. According to her statement, the private trust company “was not designed to obscure the trust structure or what it held, nor to increase secrecy in any way”.

Latchford’s daughter and her husband are not being accused of any wrongdoing. Nevertheless, the disclosure of these two Jersey trusts raises questions about the legitimacy of all objects traded or still held within Latchford’s collection and, in particular, over the provenance of Latchford-linked Khmer objects now held in public collections around the world.

'Skanda and a Peacock', Cambodia, 10th century. Courtesy of Offices of the United States Attorneys