While the Cambodian officials said they welcomed the Denver announcement, the protracted negotiations over the four pieces reflect the general reluctance of museums to return Khmer artifacts that Cambodian officials assert were stolen from the country. Gordon is part of a team the ministry assembled to track down pieces looted from Cambodia during the decades of tumult around a civil war and the genocidal regime of Pol Pot. Gordon, one of the lawyers representing the Cambodian Ministry of Culture. The four relics from Denver are of вЂњextraordinary cultural significance,вЂќ said Bradley J. The collaboration reported that 10 museums around the world held at least 43 relics that passed through the hands of Latchford or those of his associates identified by prosecutors. вЂњThe museum is now working with the government to return the pieces to Cambodia,вЂќ museum spokesperson Kristy Bassuener said in an email. The museum removed the four artifacts from its collection after receiving a letter from the news organizations seeking comment about the items. The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, the Washington Post and other media organizations in the Pandora Papers collaboration began contacting museum officials about pieces in their collection linked to Latchford in July and followed up with letters in September. prosecutors after decades of alleged trafficking in looted artifacts from the Khmer empire, which flourished in Southeast Asia a thousand years ago. The four antiquities to be returned came to the museum through Douglas Latchford, who in 2019 was indicted by U.S. The Denver Art Museum is preparing to return four antiquities to Cambodia following a news media collaboration that reported the pieces are linked to a man charged with trafficking looted artifacts.

Paradise of demons and gods