A one-page document contained in the Department of Justice’s release of files related to the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein connects billionaire art collector Leon Black with potentially looted Cambodian art and artifacts, Bloomberg Businessweek reports.
Formerly CEO of Apollo Global Management, Black is known to have paid Epstein for financial advice after his criminal offenses were public knowledge. He was formerly chair of the Museum of Modern Art’s board and remains a trustee there.
The inventory, dating to 2014, shows that Black held artworks from Cambodia, Thailand, and Vietnam. The spreadsheet is titled “Leon Black/ Narrows South East Asian Art Inventory,” with Narrows referring to an investment vehicle associated with Black.
It itemizes a dozen bronze and stone sculptures, including depictions of Hindu god Vishnu and Maitreya, whom Buddhists revere. The total estimated market value of the works is $27.7 million, and purchase prices range as high as $7 million for a rendition of the god Shiva. These prices, including eight others in excess of $1 million, “would put several of the works among the most expensive Southeast Asian antiquities ever sold,” notes Bloomberg.
The $7 million Shiva sculpture, Bloomberg notes, fits the description of a piece connected to notorious antiquities dealer Douglas Latchford. Federal prosecutors indicted Latchford in 2019 on charges of fraud and conspiracy for his dealings in Cambodian artifacts. He died the next year, before the case could come to trial, and his family returned his extensive collection to the Cambodian authorities. The country’s cultural sites were ruthlessly looted by various parties in deadly conflicts that raged from the 1960s to the 1990s between the Khmer Rouge insurgency and other factions, ultimately taking some 2 million lives.
Douglas Latchford (right) shaking hands with Sok An, the former deputy prime minister of Cambodia, in 2009.
Tang Chhin Sothy/AFP via Getty Images
Latchford published the $7 million piece in a book in 2004, calling it “one of the most important dated Khmer bronzes known,” Bloomberg points out. It was noted as belonging to an unnamed private collector. The spreadsheet from the Epstein files indicates that Black bought the piece in “Jul-13.” If that refers to 2013, that would be the year after Cambodian looting entered the headlines as Sotheby’s was found to be offering a looted Khmer sculpture. That was when, Bloomberg notes, the Department of Justice “became interested in the matter.”
In correspondence obtained by Bloomberg Businessweek, Latchford wrote in 2013 to London dealer John Eskenazi about a similar bronze work that Latchford supplied for Eskenazi to sell to Black. The correspondence also shows Latchford discussing offering a 12th-century bronze piece to Black after an Australian museum canceled the purchase of it because of insufficient documentation of its provenance, or history of ownership.
A spokesperson for Black told Bloomberg that the collector “owns a very small number of Cambodian works of art that were acquired through a well-regarded and highly reputable art dealer. He cooperated with the Justice Department’s inquiry which occurred nearly five years ago and provided all information they requested on these works of art at that time.”
In an email to ARTnews, Black’s representatives said that the collector “never met nor acquired anything directly from Latchford.”
In 2022, the US returned 30 objects to Cambodia allegedly trafficked by Latchford that had been sold for as much as $1.5 million. Some of the world’s top museums have been caught up in the Latchford investigations. In 2023, New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art initiated the return of 14 sculptures to Cambodia and two to Thailand that were connected to the disgraced dealer.
Other revelations from the Epstein files include a 51-page document listing masterworks that appear to belong to Black, by artists ranging from Michelangelo to Picasso. Epstein was personally involved in notable transactions between Gagosian gallery and Black, including in the acquisition of Picasso’s $115 million 1931 sculpture Buste de Femme (Marie-Thérèse).
