POST
PRODUCTION
SCRIPT
Foreign Correspondent
INTERNATIONAL EDITION
2023
Treasure Hunters
29 mins 52 secs
©2023
ABC Ultimo Centre
700 Harris Street Ultimo
NSW 2007 Australia
GPO Box 9994
Sydney
NSW 2001 Australia
Phone: 61 419 231 533
Kimpton.Scott@abc.net.au
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Precis It's been called the biggest art theft in history –
thousands of statues stolen from temples across
Cambodia and sold to private collectors and
international museums, including here in Australia.
Now a team of art sleuths, on behalf of the
Cambodian Government, are on a mission to bring
home the country's cultural heritage.
In this episode of Foreign Correspondent, the inside
story of how Cambodia's stolen antiquities are being
tracked and returned in a global treasure hunt.
South-East Asia correspondent Mazoe Ford travels
with the restitution team as they journey across the
country and over borders to identify, trace and reclaim
Cambodia's missing treasures.
Episode intro, Temples Music
00:10
MAZOE FORD, Reporter: Cambodia's ancient
temples are sights to behold, visited by millions. But
once you step inside you notice something's amiss.
Chambers have been ransacked, precious antiquities
plundered. Everywhere you look there are empty
pedestals where sandstone gods, kings and buddhas
once stood.
00:25
BRADLEY GORDON: It's not like 10 statues just went
out on a truck one day; we're talking thousands.
01:00
MAZOE FORD, Reporter: During decades of conflict,
looters raided these revered temples and smuggled
their statues out to shady international art dealers.
Now an epic global treasure hunt is underway to track
down what was taken and bring it home…Temple by
temple, pedestal by pedestal, the search is on for
4,000 stolen statues.
01:05
BRADLEY GORDON: This is one of the greatest art
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heists in history. 01:36
MAZOE FORD, Reporter: Prized pieces are coming
back from museums and private collections around
the world.
01:38
KUNTHEA CHUON: This belongs to Cambodia; this
is Cambodian culture.
01:45
MAZOE FORD, Reporter: And investigators now have
Australia in their sights.
01:49
Super:
Mazoe Ford
In this episode of Foreign Correspondent we'll
crisscross Cambodia, searching for evidence of looted
treasures and we'll bring you the exclusive inside
story of how the National Gallery of Australia was
conned by South-East Asia's most notorious art thief.
01:56
Title:
TREASURE HUNTERS
Music
02:14
Drone shot through archway to
temple at Koh Ker
MAZOE FORD, Reporter: Away from the busy tourist
trail, deep in the jungle of northern Cambodia is Koh
Ker.
02:26
Aerial, temple. Super:
KOH KER, CAMBODIA
In the 10th century these ancient temples were the
capital of the great Khmer empire. But today Koh Ker
is one of the country's most looted sites.
02:35
Mazoe with Bradley and team
into temple
I've been given access to the Cambodian operation to
identify, trace and reclaim the country's missing
treasures.
02:50
BRADLEY GORDON: We have experts on stone
statues, on bronze statues, historians,
anthropologists, conservationists, lawyers; it's an
amazing group of talented people.
03:00
MAZOE FORD, Reporter: American lawyer Bradley
Gordon has been appointed by the Cambodian
government to lead the restitution team.
03:11
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BRADLEY GORDON: So our mission today, we're
focused on this statue here, right.
03:18
GFX: Sketch overlay statue site MAZOE FORD, Reporter: They're
investigating the
theft of one of Koh Ker's greatest masterpieces -- the
Hindu god Shiva and goddess Uma riding a Nandi ox.
03:22
BRADLEY GORDON: We know that it was here. We
need to find out where it went to and we really need to
bring it home.
03:33
Kunthea and Mazoe with temple
guard
MAZOE FORD, Reporter: Senior investigator Kunthea
Chuon is trying to find someone who remembers the
statue. She shows this guard a photo taken at the
temple in the 1930s.
03:40
KUNTHEA CHUON: Can you please take me to see
the place?
TEMPLE GUARD: Sure.
KUNTHEA CHUON: Thank you uncle… He will show
us where he has seen it before.
MAZOE FORD, Reporter: And he remembers exactly
where this was?
KUNTHEA CHUON: Yes. He will show us.
03:54
Guard leads team to statue site MAZOE FORD, Reporter: He leads us to the
spot
where he remembers seeing the statue when he was
a teenager in the 1970s.
04:11
KUNTHEA CHUON: Where was it?
TEMPLE GUARD: Here, right here.
MAZOE FORD, Reporter: Does he remember when it
was stolen?
TEMPLE GUARD: Do you know when the statue was
stolen, or the year?
TEMPLE GUARD: No, I don't.
KUNTHEA CHUON: He doesn't know when it was
looted from here. He doesn't know.
04:25
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Team take photos MAZOE FORD, Reporter: With the location confirmed,
the team begins searching for any fragments of the ox
statue that might have been left behind by the looters.
04:40
BRADLEY GORDON: Where did it go? The looters
were in a rush. They were not precise operations;
most of the time they left the pedestals behind. They
left arms behind, they left legs, they left ears. And if
we can find any remnants, we can put that in the
documentation we put together for the evidence. We
can show it came from this temple. That's very
powerful.
04:50
Kunthea examines leg fragment
and compares to photo
KUNTHEA CHUON: I think this is the fragment of the
leg. You see like the round bit and have some
decoration.
MAZOE FORD, Reporter: Yes, it would seem to be
very similar.
KUNTHEA CHUON: Yeah. Similar. Yeah. It is very
interesting.
05:14
Kunthea interview So I can say my heart fall in love with this project
because I think it is very important for my country.
05:32
MAZOE FORD, Reporter: When you look at broken
statues, how does it make you feel?
05:41
KUNTHEA CHUON: Yeah I feel so upset. The statue
have the spirit inside. I keep the question why the
people do that?
05:46
Archival. French colonialists.
GFX Dateline
MAZOE FORD, Reporter: The looting of Cambodia's
cultural heritage stretches back to French colonial
times.
BRADLEY GORDON: Taking statues and putting
them into museums, that started with the French.
05:56
Archival. Post-independence
parade. GFX: 1953
MAZOE FORD, Reporter: The trade carried on after
independence in 1953
06:09
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Archival. Rows of statutes GFX:
1960
BRADLEY GORDON: In the '60s heads were going
out. The heads were the easiest to take out first and
then they would come back later and get the bodies.
06:14
Archival. Vietnam War footage.
GFX: 1969
MAZOE FORD, Reporter: Looting continued as
Cambodia was drawn into the Vietnam War by the
late '60s,
06:23
Archival. Pol Pot, Khmer Rouge.
GFX: 1975
and didn't stop as the country entered the darkest
chapter in its history -- the brutal reign of Pol Pot's
Khmer Rouge.
06:33
BRADLEY GORDON: There was a horrendous
genocide. Cambodia lost at least a third of its
population, if not more.
06:42
GFX: 1979 MAZOE FORD, Reporter: In 1979, the Khmer Rouge
was overthrown by the Vietnamese, but it continued to
control land near the Thai border including temple rich
areas like Koh Ker.
06:50
Archival. Khmer Rouge BRADLEY GORDON: In '79, we see gangs forming
and looting and the Khmer Rouge were involved, and
it would be funding their purchase of weapons. We
know that there were other armies involved A lot of
different factions, all smelling money.
07:03
Desecrated statues. GFX: 1980 MAZOE FORD, Reporter: As conflict raged on,
the
illegal trade boomed.
07:21
BRADLEY GORDON: By the '80s you start to see a
lot of statues taken out. Then in the '90s it reaches
fever pitch. You had armed conflict in the country;
07:26
GFX: 1998 '98, you're just hitting the very end of the Khmer
Rouge period. We're talking recent history.
07:36
Bradley interview This is within my lifetime, your lifetime.
07:42
Archival. Sotheby's auction MAZOE FORD, Reporter: Khmer statues had
become
big ticket items for art dealers and must have pieces
07:46
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for private collectors and museums hungry for exotic
pieces from the Far East.
Bradley interview BRADLEY GORDON: It's very accurate to describe
them as blood antiquities.
08:02
Restitution team at work MAZOE FORD, Reporter: Now the restitution team is
picking up the pieces.
BRADLEY GORDON: It's an epic mess that we are
trying to clean up.
08:04
Bradley interview It's thousands of crime sites.
08:15
Kunthea examining statue sites MAZOE FORD, Reporter: The teams estimates
there
are 2,000 stolen statues in private collections and
another 2,000 in 105 international museums.
08:17
Bradley interview Are there any in Australia?
BRADLEY GORDON: Yeah. There are many in
Australia and I think when we start to really dig down
to what's in Australia, we're going to be surprised that
some of the greatest national treasures of Cambodia
ended up there.
08:30
Bridge over Mekong. GFX Map
overlay showing Tboung Khmum
MAZOE FORD, Reporter: We're heading south east
–across the mighty Mekong river to Tboung Khmum
province on the Vietnamese border.
08:42
Mazoe in car with Bradley The team's taking me to meet a man who has
information about three bronze Buddhist statues,
stolen then sold to the National Gallery of Australia.
08:57
BRADLEY GORDON: The national gallery thought
they were from Vietnam. We actually found a man
here in Cambodia who knows these statues, and he
actually dug them up.
MAZOE FORD, Reporter: Wow. He got them out of
the ground.
BRADLEY GORDON: He got them out of the ground.
09:09
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And we're going to take you to meet him today.
Aerial. Tboung Khmum MAZOE FORD, Reporter: Tboung Khmum is home to
Cambodia's Cham people, descendants of the ancient
Champa kingdom, a once Buddhist community that
converted to Islam.
09:33
'Falcon' in mosque This is the former looter we've
come to meet. The
team's codenamed him 'the falcon'. Do you recognise
any of these three pieces?
09:53
Mazoe shows Falcon photo of
statues
FALCON: I found this one and sold it for 100,000
riels.
10:05
MAZOE FORD, Reporter: So that's about USD25.
Could you take me to see the place where you dug
this up?
10:15
FALCON: Okay, I can take you there now. I can do it
now.
10:19
Village GVs MAZOE FORD, Reporter: The Champa kingdom
existed from the 2nd to around the 19th century. A
vast empire that at its peak controlled most of what's
now central and southern Vietnam and at times parts
of Cambodia.
10:30
Mazoe and team walk with
Falcon through field to statue site
Locals believe one of the last Champa kings was
buried nearby, and that his treasures were buried
here, too.
10:44
FALCON: I was around 35 years old when I was
asked to dig. I was very poor. Our country was still at
war then.
10:53
MAZOE FORD, Reporter: The Falcon came digging
here in 1994 when it was dense jungle. Today, one
distinctive tree remains, helping him remember where
he found the statue.
FALCON: That's the place, that area.
MAZOE FORD, Reporter: This is the spot?
11:11
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FALCON: Yes, that's it.
MAZOE FORD, Reporter: Are you sure they came
from this field?
FALCON: I recognise the area. I wouldn't offer to take
you if it's outside this area. I can't stand the heat.
MAZOE FORD, Reporter: How did you know the
statue was right here?
11:28
Falcon describes unearthing
statue
FALCON: It's quiet here. As we dug deeper we got
closer to it. It's gone too far from it. Over there was too
far. It was here!
11:43
MAZOE FORD, Reporter: The Falcon worked with
another looter codenamed the Lion. He died in 2021,
but confessed to looting the other two Cham statues
from the same field.
12:05
Mazoe with the Falcon These statues are now in Australia at the National
Gallery of Australia, which paid 1.5 million US dollars
for them. What do you think of that?
12:16
FALCON: How much? Just like the old saying says
"the picker worked hard to get it, but the person who
got hold of it reaps the benefit".
12:26
Looting re-enactment. Super:
RE-ENACTMENT
Music
12:35
MAZOE FORD, Reporter: The way the looters tell it,
all three Cham bronzes were packed up and
smuggled across the Thai border to be sold.
12:40
FALCON: I regret digging it for sale. I'm sorry to see it
ended up overseas. I'd be grateful if it could be
returned.
MAZOE FORD, Reporter: And like so many of
Cambodia's stolen treasures,
12:48
they ended up in the hands of one man. This is where
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Latchford at body-building
contest
we find the next link in the chain, a body building
contest in Thailand. The man handing out the trophies
here is Douglas Latchford a wealthy British
businessman who moved to Bangkok in his 20s and
rose to become
13:00
Photo. Latchford with stolen
Cambodian antiquities
the number one dealer in stolen Cambodian
antiquities.
BRADLEY GORDON: Douglas Latchford was deeply
involved in the
13:2
Bradley interview looting networks that we've been investigating
here in
Cambodia.
13:36
Photos. Latchford with stolen
Cambodian antiquities
This is somebody who was obsessed with these
statues. He didn't care about how he was getting
them, or where they were coming from. He found his
way into the auction houses, into Sotheby's and
Christie's and
13:40
Bradley interview into the museums, the Metropolitan Museum of Art,
the British Museum, all these institutions that have
been around for a long time, have very credible
reputations. And he was able to sell to them for
millions and millions of dollars. He was an incredible
conman.
13:55
Bradley shows Mazoe recovered
statutes in gallery
MAZOE FORD, Reporter: The restitution team has
recovered around 300 antiquities - the majority linked
to Latchford.
14:11
BRADLEY GORDON: Mazoe, in this gallery is the
Duryodhana. This is the statue that brought down
Douglas Latchford.
14:22
MAZOE FORD, Reporter: The Duryodana now takes
pride of place at the national museum in Phnom Penh.
It was looted in 1972 from Koh Ker, and after decades
with a private collector resurfaced in 2011 for auction
14:29
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at Sotheby's in New York.
BRADLEY GORDON: The US government moves.
They got some information that the feet were back
here in Cambodia. They seized the statue. And the
statue ends up being returned to Cambodia.
MAZOE FORD, Reporter: And you can see that it's a
very precise match there with the feet, can't you?
14:45
BRADLEY GORDON: Yes. It's a perfect match.
MAZOE FORD, Reporter: US investigators alleged
Latchford knew it was stolen when he bought it and
that he helped forge documentation to get it into the
UK. Latchford denied ever owning the Duryodhana
but the case put him firmly on the radar of US
prosecutors.
15:01
And when the heat was on, did he stop dealing? What
did he do?
BRADLEY GORDON: No, he continued, he was an
addict,
15:22
Photo. Latchford with statue he really showed no remorse.
MAZOE FORD, Reporter: In 2019 he was charged by
US authorities with the trafficking of Cambodian
antiquities, but died in 2020 before facing trial.
15:30
Ant scurrying along leaf/Aerial
Koh Ker
Music
15:43
MAZOE FORD, Reporter: Latchford may have
escaped justice but investigations didn't stop.
15:50
Bradley and team at Koh Ker with
Jungle Cat
BRADLEY GORDON: So it was in five or six pieces
here?
15:55
MAZOE FORD, Reporter: Brad and Kunthea have
returned to Koh Ker, where there's been a
breakthrough in the case of the missing ox.
15:59
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This man, codenamed the Jungle Cat, was a broker
and he claims his gang stole the statue from the
temple in the '90s.
16:06
Kunthea shows photos to Jungle
Cat
KUNTHEA CHUON: When you took it out did you do it
during the day or the night?
16:16
JUNGLE CAT: Not sure if it was day or night. I think it
was day because during the war no one was around
to see.
16:20
MAZOE FORD, Reporter: The sculpture was in
pieces by the time it was smuggled across the border
into Thailand. The Jungle Cat tried to repair it for sale.
16:27
KUNTHEA CHUON: Where was this photo taken?
JUNGLE CAT: It was taken at the place where the
statue's pieces were put together.
KUNTHEA CHUON: The place where the repair was
done?
JUNGLE CAT: Yes, where the repair was done.
16:34
MAZOE FORD, Reporter: The Jungle Cat recalls he
had three potential buyers including Douglas
Latchford.
16:44
JUNGLE CAT: I did meet him in person, at first he
agreed to take it but he changed his mind because of
the repairs.
16:51
BRADLEY GORDON: Who did he sell it to?
17:01
JUNGLE CAT: To a lady. This lady is super rich. In
the number one group after Latchford.
BRADLEY GORDON: After Latchford she's number
two.
17:03
What we learned today from Jungle Cat was she was
the second
17:15
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Bradley interview most important collector, dealer of stolen Cambodian
antiquities.
MAZOE FORD, Reporter: Second after Douglas
Latchford?
BRADLEY GORDON: Second after Douglas
Latchford. That's huge.
17:19
Bangkok skyline and GVs Music
17:31
MAZOE FORD, Reporter: The Jungle Cat's tip leads
the restitution team to Thailand's capital Bangkok, the
gateway for stolen antiquities from Cambodia. The
team's
17:36
Kunthea and team member in
van
managed to track down the Thai dealer who bought
the stolen ox.
17:46
Bradley, Mazoe and team in van BRADLEY GORDON: It was in her shop a number
of
years ago.
17:52
MAZOE FORD, Reporter: They've given her the code
name Poison Ivy and Brad's hoping she'll talk.
BRADLEY GORDON: I just hope we find her today.
17:54
MAZOE FORD, Reporter: So how are you feeling?
18:04
Bradley and Mazoe walk BRADLEY GORDON: A bit apprehensive, but excited
because this is really important. She's one of the most
critical people that we're tracking at the moment.
We've heard a lot about her. We think that she might
know tremendous amount about Douglas Latchford,
and about the whole trade in Khmer antiquities.
18:07
MAZOE FORD, Reporter: Hopefully, she talks to you.
BRADLEY GORDON: Yeah. I hope so.
MAZOE FORD, Reporter: Good luck.
BRADLEY GORDON: Thank you.
18:22
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MAZOE FORD, Reporter: Brad wants to meet her
alone so she doesn't get spooked.
Music
18:30
Brad returns from meeting with
cardboard box
MAZOE FORD, Reporter: After two hours he returns,
with a cardboard box.
18:40
BRADLEY GORDON: They gave me everything on
the shelf that was Khmer. Everything. As a gift to
Cambodia.
18:46
KANYA: Unbelievable!
BRADLEY GORDON: I met Poison Ivy.
KANYA: You met her?
KUNTHEA CHUON: She was in the shop?
18:54
BRADLEY GORDON: I explained who I was. I said
you know I work with the Cambodian government, I
come here today. And I said could we take photos of
these? She said 'You can have them all'.
MAZOE FORD, Reporter: What did she say about the
ox?
19:04
Photo of statute Shiva and Uma
riding ox
BRADLEY GORDON: So she admitted that she
handled it. It was quite extraordinary. She didn't deny.
She said,
19:16
Brad, Mazoe and team 'Look this went through many hands. I was just
one of
them. I got a commission and it's long gone'.
19:19
KANYA: Did she tell you who she sell it to?
BRADLEY GORDON: She said she can't
remember…Should we open it?
19:28
Brad and team open box and
examine fragments
19:35
MAZOE FORD, Reporter: These fragments were
mounted as ornaments but will go home as gods.
19:44
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KUNTHEA CHUON: I feel emotional that I have a
chance to touch this statue. Good result of him talking
and getting all of these returned back to our country.
So it's amazing! It is good days for our team!
19:55
BRADLEY GORDON: I think we will go talk to the
Thai authorities and see if we can get them to do
something.
20:11
Cambodian flag flying on
beachfront.
Music
20:50
MAZOE FORD, Reporter: In Phnom Penh the
investigation into the bronze Cham statues sitting in
the National Gallery of Australia is ramping up.
20:19
Brad and Mazoe into museum,
looking at Latchford files
Douglas Latchford's family has started handing over
his files and Brad's keen to show me.
20:27
BRADLEY GORDON: We got thousands and
thousands of emails, invoices, receipts. They're all on
this hard drive.
20:37
MAZOE FORD, Reporter: Wow. And were there any
documents in the files to do with the Cham statues
that are in the National Gallery of Australia?
20:46
BRADLEY GORDON: One incredible email we found
has this map. This is the area that we've been looking
at in terms of where the looters said they found these
statues.
20:53
Then we found documents to do with the offer to
Australia. So we see in 2011 he sends a letter to
whom it may concern saying I'm offering for sale to
the National Gallery of Australia. He's found his buyer.
You know they're paying $1.5 million for these three
statues.
21:03
MAZOE FORD, Reporter: So these documents prove
21:29
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the NGA bought directly from Latchford.
BRADLEY GORDON: I understand they were under a
non-disclosure agreement, a secrecy agreement. And
they haven't put that information out there. What's
sitting on our files now is a clear indication that
Douglas Latchford was the seller.
21:32
MAZOE FORD, Reporter: Did the NGA conduct due
diligence in buying these statues?
BRADLEY GORDON: I don't think they followed the
standards they should have in terms of international
museums.
21:45
You combine it together, the map, the testimony of the
looters, the information we have from the emails and
so on, I believe strongly that these pieces are from
Cambodia. They're stolen. They should not have been
bought by the NGA.
21:55
Returned statues in museum.
Pen Moni Makara walks among
Cambodian antiquities
MAZOE FORD, Reporter: Based on the evidence
collected the Cambodian government's requesting the
return of the Cham bronzes from the National Gallery
of Australia. It also suspects the gallery has up to 20
stolen Khmer statues.
PEN MONI MAKARA: Our priority is to bring them
back home.
22:10
MAZOE FORD, Reporter: Pen Moni Makara is the
Secretary of State for the Ministry of Culture.
22:30
Pen Moni Makara interview PEN MONI MAKARA: The National Gallery of
Australia needs to review their acquisition process
and they need to have a look at their checks and
balances.
22:35
MAZOE FORD, Reporter: What would you say to
international museums and private collectors around
the world who have Cambodian antiquities now?
22:47
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PEN MONI MAKARA: The Cambodian people has
never given permission for
22:55
Pen Moni Makara lights incense
in front of statue
all of these statues to be taken out. They belong to the
Cambodian people. For us, they are not just art.
22:59
Pen Moni Makara interview These are gods and kings. Our kings and our god is
not meant to be their table display.
23:11
Phnom Penh park GVs Music
23:20
MAZOE FORD, Reporter: These gods are being
returned to a country that's at peace now. But for
many here, life remains a struggle.
23:26
Hun Sen places offering at statue Prime Minister Hun Sen, a former Khmer
Rouge
commander, has ruled with an iron fist for 38 years.
He's announced he'll hand over power to his son later
this month but will still be advising him.
23:34
The Hun Sen government does have problems with
corruption and a worsening human rights record, and
there'll be some people out there who say, we
shouldn't be returning statues to a regime like this.
What do you say to that?
23:49
Bradley interview BRADLEY GORDON: This is not so much about
doing something that's just for the powerful people.
This is doing something for the people across the
board.
24:00
Park GVs I believe it's appropriate to be helping Cambodia to
get back its cultural heritage. On the human rights
side, I think it's also appropriate to be asking hard
questions. I don't think other nations can hold hostage
cultural heritage items to try to get changes in human
rights. But I think they can raise those issues, and I
think they can push governments to change their
behaviour, and I think they can criticise these
governments at the same time as returning something
24:08
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that's okay.
Canberra morning GVs. Super:
THREE MONTHS LATER
Music
24:41
Team arrive at NGA MAZOE FORD, Reporter: Seven thousand kilometres
away from Phnom Penh I've come with the restitution
team to Canberra, to the National Gallery of Australia.
24:51
BRADLEY GORDON: We made it.
MAZOE FORD, Reporter: Welcome to the national
gallery.
BRADLEY GORDON: Thank you; long journey.
MAZOE FORD, Reporter: Today is momentous.
25:00
Marika greets team MARIKA: Hi, Marika. Lovely to meet you, Brad.
Welcome to the National Gallery.
BRADLEY GORDON: This is our team.
MARIKA: Lovely to meet you, come right this way.
25:11
Team view Cham statues MAZOE FORD, Reporter: After two years of
negotiations the gallery has brought the three bronze
Cham statues out of storage for the team to see.
BRADLEY GORDON: Incredible.
KANYA: Finally! Amazing, right.
25:21
BRADLEY GORDON: That flower is amazing. The
flower is so beautiful.
25:42
KUNTHEA CHUON: And I can see how beautiful this
statue. I don’t know how to describe my feeling, but I
am so lucky I can see the real one in here.
25:48
MAZOE FORD, Reporter: Seeing the statues reminds
the team of the looters who took these treasures but
always regretted it.
26:01
BRADLEY GORDON: So I think it just brings back so
many memories for us. We went six, seven times to
26:09
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research, to pinpoint the exact location and to gather
many, many stories.
MAZOE FORD, Reporter: What do you think the
Falcon would make of this, Brad?
BRADLEY GORDON: I think he would cry like us. It
gives a lot of meaning to our work.
CU on statues Music
26:27
MAZOE FORD, Reporter: I've followed this team from
a rice field in Cambodia to Canberra for these statues.
26:31
Mazoe to camera And not only do they get to see them today, the
National Gallery of Australia has agreed to give them
back.
26:35
CU on statues But serious questions remain about how the gallery
acquired the statues back in 2011…
26:42
Mazoe greets Nick Mitzevich Nick Mitzevich is the gallery's current
director.
26:51
Mitzevich interview What provenance information did Douglas Latchford
provide the NGA?
NICK MITZEVICH: Well Douglas Latchford did
provide us with the provenance history, and the
provenance history stated that it was exported from
Vietnam, not Cambodia. Vietnam didn't require export
licences. It then moved to a private collection in Hong
Kong,
26:56
then to a London collection. The National Gallery
knew the private collector to be dead. And so there
was really nothing further to explore there. There were
no red flags with Latchford at the time. And so the
gallery did accept the provenance that was provided
to us.
27:15
MAZOE FORD, Reporter: Douglas Latchford did ask
the NGA to sign a non-disclosure agreement. Why
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was that?
NICK MITZEVICH: I really haven't got to the bottom
of why. He did say to the National Gallery so he could
provide the history of the object to us in confidence.
27:37
MAZOE FORD, Reporter: Was that not a red flag?
27:47
NICK MITZEVICH: It seems obvious now, but we
took people on face value and certainly that's not
appropriate today.
27:49
Handing back ceremony MAZOE FORD, Reporter: Later that day a ceremony
to right a historical wrong.
28:02
NICK MITZEVICH: "Thank you for joining us today for
an important moment, the first handover and
repatriation of a Cambodian work that we've had here
at the National Gallery and in Australia.
28:10
Monk blesses statues MAZOE FORD, Reporter: The statues are blessed
marking a new beginning.
28:23
Ambassador signs document Cambodia's ambassador Cheunboran Chanborey
formally receives the statues, but they won't return
home just yet. They'll stay on loan at the NGA for
three years, but there'll no longer be any doubt about
where they came from and who they belong to.
28:33
Brad and handing back event BRADLEY GORDON: I think we are seeing a trend
that's going to continue in the next 10, 20 years where
many, many objects are going to go back to the
rightful owners.
28:55
We have an enormous amount of detective work to do
and we have so many clues now, and every day we're
getting more. So a lot more to come.
29:04
Credits [see below] 29:1
Out point
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REPORTER
Mazoe Ford
PRODUCER
Anne Worthington
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY
Greg Nelson ACS
EDITOR
Leah Donovan
ASSISTANT EDITOR
Tom Carr
GRAPHICS PRODUCER & STORY CONCEPT
Angelique Lu
GRAPHIC DESIGN, ABC VIDEO LAB
Eric Hao Zheng
Ario Rasouli
CAMBODIAN FIXER
Sun Narin
THAILAND RESEARCH
Supattra Vimonsuknopparat
ARCHIVAL RESEARCH
Michelle Boukheris
LIBRARY RESEARCH
Cathy Beale
ARCHIVE
Douglas Latchford portrait by Derry Moore ©
Bangkok Post
BBC/Getty Images
Retour du roi Norodom Sihanouk
a Phnom Penh/INA
SPECIAL THANKS
APSARA National Authority
Eric Bourdonneau, EFEO
SENIOR PRODUCTION MANAGER
Michelle Roberts
PRODUCTION CO-ORDINATOR
Victoria Allen
DIGITAL PRODUCER
Matt Henry
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SUPERVISING PRODUCER
Sharon O'Neill
EXECUTIVE PRODUCER
Morag Ramsay
foreign correspondent
abc.net.au/foreign
@abcnews
©2023 Australian Broadcasting Corporation