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Douglas Latchford
Douglas Arthur Joseph "Dynamite" Latchford (15 October 1931 – 2 August 2020) was a British art dealer, smuggler and author. He is known for being a prominent collector and trader of Cambodian statues and artefacts, which he illegally smuggled out of the country during the civil war and Khmer Rouge eras, and sold to prominent museums and art collectors. He was charged with fraud in 2019 for falsifying the origins of traded antiquities. Since his death in 2020, millions of dollars' worth of artefacts smuggled by Latchford have been repatriated to Cambodia.
Latchford was born on 15 October 1931 in Mumbai, India, which was at the time under the British Raj. He was educated at Brighton College in England before returning to India shortly before Independence.
Latchford initially worked in the pharmaceutical industry in Mumbai. He moved to Bangkok in 1956, and in 1963 established a drug distribution company. Latchford also invested profitably in Thailand land development and became a Thai citizen in 1968. He was briefly married to a Thai woman and took a Thai name, Pakpong Kriangsak.
A long-time devotee of the sport of bodybuilding, Latchford became a patron of the sport in Thailand and was the honorary president of the Thai Bodybuilding Association from 2016 until his death.
A controversial figure, Latchford was best known as a collector of Cambodian antiquities. According to his obituary in The New York Times, Latchford was "a cultured accumulator of museum-quality Khmer sculptures and jewels", whilst The Diplomat reported that, due to his leading position in the illegal antiquities trade of the Khmer Rouge, "no single figure looms as large over a nation’s wholesale pillage." Nonetheless, the Cambodian government awarded Latchford a Grand Cross of the Royal Order of Monisaraphon in 2008. He co-authored three books on Khmer antiquities with academic Emma Bunker.
In the 1970s, Latchford became one of the leading suppliers of Cambodian art, selling to museums and private collections in Europe and North America, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. He kept the best pieces for himself and his personal collection is rumored to rival that of the National Museum of Cambodia. When his daughter inherited the collection and donated it in full to Cambodia, it contained 125 pieces and was valued at $50 million.
In 2019 Latchford was indicted for wire fraud and other crimes related to antiquities trafficking. He died in 2020.
In October 2021, a large investigation by media from the UK, US, and Australia, working with the ICIJ, explored the prevalence of artworks that Latchford had traded to public museums and galleries. The media consortium focused on the books published by Latchford, sale records, museum records, and corporate documents from trust structures established by Latchford for inheritance purposes to identify 27 pieces linked to Latchford in prominent collections. It highlighted at least a dozen works of art linked to Latchford held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and another fifteen relics among the Denver Art Museum, the British Museum, Cleveland Museum of Art, and the National Gallery of Australia.
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Douglas Latchford
Douglas Arthur Joseph "Dynamite" Latchford (15 October 1931 – 2 August 2020) was a British art dealer, smuggler and author. He is known for being a prominent collector and trader of Cambodian statues and artefacts, which he illegally smuggled out of the country during the civil war and Khmer Rouge eras, and sold to prominent museums and art collectors. He was charged with fraud in 2019 for falsifying the origins of traded antiquities. Since his death in 2020, millions of dollars' worth of artefacts smuggled by Latchford have been repatriated to Cambodia.
Latchford was born on 15 October 1931 in Mumbai, India, which was at the time under the British Raj. He was educated at Brighton College in England before returning to India shortly before Independence.
Latchford initially worked in the pharmaceutical industry in Mumbai. He moved to Bangkok in 1956, and in 1963 established a drug distribution company. Latchford also invested profitably in Thailand land development and became a Thai citizen in 1968. He was briefly married to a Thai woman and took a Thai name, Pakpong Kriangsak.
A long-time devotee of the sport of bodybuilding, Latchford became a patron of the sport in Thailand and was the honorary president of the Thai Bodybuilding Association from 2016 until his death.
A controversial figure, Latchford was best known as a collector of Cambodian antiquities. According to his obituary in The New York Times, Latchford was "a cultured accumulator of museum-quality Khmer sculptures and jewels", whilst The Diplomat reported that, due to his leading position in the illegal antiquities trade of the Khmer Rouge, "no single figure looms as large over a nation’s wholesale pillage." Nonetheless, the Cambodian government awarded Latchford a Grand Cross of the Royal Order of Monisaraphon in 2008. He co-authored three books on Khmer antiquities with academic Emma Bunker.
In the 1970s, Latchford became one of the leading suppliers of Cambodian art, selling to museums and private collections in Europe and North America, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. He kept the best pieces for himself and his personal collection is rumored to rival that of the National Museum of Cambodia. When his daughter inherited the collection and donated it in full to Cambodia, it contained 125 pieces and was valued at $50 million.
In 2019 Latchford was indicted for wire fraud and other crimes related to antiquities trafficking. He died in 2020.
In October 2021, a large investigation by media from the UK, US, and Australia, working with the ICIJ, explored the prevalence of artworks that Latchford had traded to public museums and galleries. The media consortium focused on the books published by Latchford, sale records, museum records, and corporate documents from trust structures established by Latchford for inheritance purposes to identify 27 pieces linked to Latchford in prominent collections. It highlighted at least a dozen works of art linked to Latchford held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and another fifteen relics among the Denver Art Museum, the British Museum, Cleveland Museum of Art, and the National Gallery of Australia.