Lindemann Family Returns $20M Worth of Looted Cambodian Artifacts

The household of late billionaire George Lindemann voluntarily returned 33 looted antiquities to Cambodia on Monday, September 11. The household made an settlement with america Lawyer’s Workplace for the Southern District of New York and can not face criminal charges.

The returned antiquities embody Tenth-century statues of the epic warrior Dhrishtadyumna and of Ardhanarishvara, a composite of the god Shiva and the goddess Parvati. The gathering additionally consists of six heads of devas and asuras (characters that symbolize good and evil) that had been stolen from the gates of Angkor Thom contained in the Angkor Wat temple advanced. The Cambodian investigators estimate that Lindemann paid $20 million for the 33 objects.

Pure gasoline mogul George Lindemann died in 2018. He’s survived by his spouse Frayda and three youngsters: Adam Lindemann, proprietor of the New York gallery Venus Over Manhattan; Sloan Lindemann Barnett, a lawyer and writer; and George Lindemann Jr., an actual property developer. 

A 2008 Architectural Digest spread on George and Frayda Lindemann’s $68.5 million Palm Seashore house tipped off Cambodian authorities. Then, in 2021, the journal featured Sloan Lindemann Barnett and her husband Roger. Images of their $42 million San Francisco mansion had been altered to take away the looted Cambodian antiquities on show, however the originals had been discovered on an architect’s web site.

In accordance with Cambodia’s lawyer Bradley J. Gordon and as reported by the New York Times, the nation’s investigators have pictures of Lindemann and his spouse Frayda on their method to meet infamous antiquities smuggler Douglas Latchford. In addition they declare to have proof of communication between the 2 males. Latchford started pillaging Cambodia’s cultural heritage whereas its inhabitants suffered beneath the genocidal Khmer Rouge within the Nineteen Seventies. He allegedly continued to deal in looted artwork till not less than 2012. Latchford, who died in 2020, was indicted for conspiracy, wire fraud, and different crimes in 2019. 

“For many years, Cambodia suffered by the hands of unscrupulous artwork sellers and looters who trafficked cultural treasures to the American artwork market,” US Lawyer Damian Williams stated in a press release, including that the current settlement “units a framework for the return of cultural patrimony.”