Douglas Latchford

Altogether, he's a seven-time Loeb finalist and has picked up honors at the National Press Club, SOPA, and SABEW along the way.

Today's episode takes us into one of the strangest corners of the art world, which is the decades-long industrial-scale looting of ancient Khmer treasures out of Cambodia and the British art dealer at the center of it all, Douglas Latchford, a man who spent 50 years selling the stolen antiquities to the world's biggest museums and private collectors worldwide.

which was all built on forged provenance and a story that pretty much, it seems, nobody even bothered to check.

Or if they did, the incentives were too misaligned to do anything about it.

It's the story of... actual value and providence derided artificial scarcity and value money laundering theft broken failed states misaligned incentives greed it's an incredible book it's called the man who stole the gods and here's my conversation with matt campbell how did the story in the first place get onto your radar

So I came to the story virtually the same way I've come to almost every story, which is I just saw headlines float by and I thought it looked interesting.

And in this case, the headline was in 2019 that this British art dealer had been indicted for fraud and conspiracy federally in the U.S. relating to the sale of Southeast Asian antiquities.

And I thought, well, that's interesting.

Welcome back to In the Shadows of Utopia.

Very special guest on this bonus episode today, the investigative award-winning journalist from Bloomberg, Matthew Campbell, to speak about his latest excellent book, "The Man Who Stole the Gods," detailing the decades-long art heist with Douglas Latchford at the center of it.

So enjoy.

[upbeat music] Many people listening to this show are fairly well invested in Cambodian history.

We've got Ta Mok, uh, child soldiers who become looters.

We've got Thai bodybuilders, national galleries.

Um, and somewhere near the center of all that, we have at least one subject of the title, the obsessive, almost colonialism incarnate figure of Douglas Latchford.

Uh, and given the diverse range of subjects I've just skirted across, there is a somewhat difficult task to actually pick a place to begin talking to you about this.

[gentle music] In the chaos of the Khmer Rouge genocide in Cambodia's civil war, priceless treasures of the Khmer Empire were plundered, smuggled over the border, and trafficked into the hands of elite collectors around the world.

At the center of the trade was Douglas Latchford, an expat Brit known as Dynamite Doug for the ruthless methods his looting crews used to blast statues from Cambodia's temples.

My next guest, Matthew Campbell, spent years investigating Latchford's murky supply chain that led from the killing fields to the most distinguished museums in the world, including our National Gallery and The Metropolitan Museum in New York.

An award-winning journalist with a number of distinguished books to his credit, Matthew explores the inner workings of this heist in his new book, The Man Who Stole the Gods: A True Story of War, Obsession, and a Global Art Conspiracy.

Matthew, how did you first come across Latchford?

Well, I came across this in the same way I come across a lot of stories, which is I just saw a headline float by and thought there must be more to that.

And in this case, the headline was that a British art dealer, Douglas Latchford, had been indicted on federal fraud and conspiracy charges in New York relating to the sale of antiquities from Cambodia, and I thought, "That sounds pretty interesting." And when I found out that, uh, some of these objects had ended up in The Metropolitan, you know, the, the greatest museum in America, a- and indeed in, in overseas galleries like the NGA in Australia, I thought, "Well, that is definitely something that is worth my time." So from there, I was pretty much hooked.

So who did he turn out to be?