News Updates on the Kapoor Case

My earlier stories on the Kapoor case attrracted quite a lot of interest, so I thought some readers might find useful a brief summary of some of the subsequent news items. Recapping, Kapoor - who was born in Gorakhpur in Uttar Pradesh in 1949 - is alleged to have been involved in a number of cases of smuggling of antique sculptures from India, especially from temples in Tamil Nadu. There it is alleged he and an associate Sanjeevi Asokan, described in the Indian press as "a notorious idol thief", hired some men (Rathinam and Kaliyaperumal) to steal ancient idols from historic temples. The gang is accused of plundering idols dating back to the 11th century from Arulmigu Sundareswarar and Varadaraja Perumal temples in Ariyalur district. Investigators allege that Kapoor also smuggled Buddhist artefacts out of Afghanistan and various antiques from Pakistan. Kapoor, a US citizen set up an antique gallery in New York and also operated a website, www.artofpast.com, and a company, Nimbus Import and Export Inc, to sell antiques. The website was shut down after Tamil Nadu police alerted US authorities through the Interpol about the illegal sale of idols stolen from India through the site. Kapoor travelled to Germany on business, apparently unaware that he was on an Interpol 'wanted persons' list. He was arrested and extradited last week to India. Here's some more news:

July 15th 2012 The Kapoor Case Continues... It Surfaced Down Under blog.

"The latest new reports (here and here) regarding the extradition and trial of one Mr. Subash Kapoor (see photo at left) attest that prosecution has now begun. He is currently on trial in an Ariyalur courtroom for the specific charge of helping to illegally export 18 idols from Tamil Nadu, but he will apparently be interrogated for details regarding many other cases.  [...]  Now the art, museum, and illicit antiquities research communities at large can only wait to see how the trial(s) unfold and what kind of justice is served. In this case at least, all roads eventually led to New York..."

July 16, 2012  Money trail led investigators to idol smuggler
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/chennai/Money-trail-led-investigators-to-idol-smuggler/articleshow/14972511.cms

CHENNAI: Investigators followed the money trail from the sale of ancient idols stolen from temples in Tamil Nadu's Ariyalur district to track down antique dealer Subhash Chandra Kapoor, who was extradited from Germany on Saturday in connection with the theft and smuggling of dozens of artefacts from the state [...].

July 16, 2012 Cops face tough task to bring back stolen idols
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/chennai/Cops-face-tough-task-to-bring-back-stolen-idols/articleshow/14972704.cms 

CHENNAI: The Tamil Nadu police have long and arduous tasks ahead before they locate, identify and bring back temple antiques stolen and exported from India [...].

But from the time the news broke that he was in India, an awful lot of people in the US have been looking up the story on my blog. I imagine that among them are many people who in the past few years have bought stuff from Mr Kapoor's gallery.

July 18, 2012  Judicial custody of antique dealer extended
http://www.thehindu.com/news/states/tamil-nadu/article3646561.ece

 The judicial custody of Subhash Chandra Kapoor, international antique dealer and accused in two idol theft cases in Ariyalur district in 2008, was extended till Wednesday. [...] The two cases relate to theft of idols from Brahadeeswara Temple, Sripurandan, 35 km from Ariyalur, in Vikramangalam police limits on March 21, 2008 and the other case relates to the theft of another set of idols, including three panchaloha ones, from Varadarajaperumal Temple, Suthamalli, 22 km from Ariyalur in Udayarpalayam police limits. In the first case, 12 persons were cited as accused and in the second seven [...].

And this a rather sordid footnote. There had previously been a number of stories going back a number of years about the souring of this relationship in the media but I decided not to use them here, I suppose we might have guessed that an ex-lover would somehow be tied to the case. 

July 18, 2012   Ex gave cops info on idol smuggler 
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/chennai/Ex-gave-cops-info-on-idol-smuggler/articleshow/15024443.cms

CHENNAI: Subhash Chandra Kapoor's former girlfriend, an art dealer in Singapore, gave investigators vital clues that convinced Interpol to issue a notice for the idol smuggler, leading to his arrest in Germany and his extradition to India on July 14. Paramaspry Punusamy, 56, who owns contemporary art gallery Jazmin Asian Arts in the Southeast Asian city-state, approached officers of the CB-CID's idol wing who were on the trail of the New York-based Kapoor, 64, and provided them with a recent photograph of him and tipped them off on his movements [...]. 

Well, for those curious, here is a photo of the vengeful Ms Punusamy in 2007 in New York dressed for the occasion  in a "traditional Indian sari". She's still got some of his antiquities it seems.

Third US Arrest in Kapoor Case

The indictment of the girlfriend of Manhattan's Indian American antiquities dealer Subhash Kapoor, the third person criminally charged in the US in the case, has revealed the fake ownership histories of stolen Indian artefacts palmed off to museums across the world (citing "Chasing Aphrodite" blog).

The Manhattan District Attorney's Office has criminally charged Kapoor's girlfriend Selina Mohamed with participating in a decades-long conspiracy to launder stolen antiquities by creating false ownership histories. She is also charged with, more recently, helping to hide four stolen bronze sculptures as investigators closed in on Kapoor [...] Prosecutors allege that since 1992 Mohamed has been involved in the fabrication of bogus ownership histories for dozens of objects Kapoor sold to museums around the world. Since 2007, she also had nominal control over several of Kapoor's storage facilities. The possession charges relate to Mohamed's alleged role in the disappearance of four of Kapoor's stolen bronze sculptures -- two of Shiva and two of Uma -- valued at $14.5 million. Kapoor instructed his gallery manager to send the Chola-era bronzes to Mohamed's house in November 2011, the complaint states. After federal agents with Homeland Security Investigations searched Kapoor's Art of the Past gallery and storage facilities in January 2012, Mohamed insisted that the bronzes be removed from her house. They are now missing.

Selina Mohamed was arrested 20th December and has been charged with four counts of criminal possession of stolen property and one count of conspiracy, court records show.  

The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office also charged Selina Mohammed with running three storage units in New York that stored looted antiquities. There is an interesting oddity about reports on the case. Nowhere is it explicitly said what Ms Mohamed does for a living (presumably somewhere in the Manhattan area), nor are there any photographs of her linked to the Kapoor case. Does Ms Mohamed have a connection with the fine art trade like Mr K's previous business associate and girlfriend? Just curious.

Kapoor's sister Sushma Sareen has been indicted and gallery manager Aaron Freedman, pleaded guilty to six criminal counts earlier this month (there is also a US arrest warrant out for Kapoor).

IANS, 'Indian American art dealer palmed off stolen Indian artefacts', December 27, 2013

New York Antiquity Dealer Threatens Blogger, Then Disappears

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Not so long ago, Subhash Kapoor owner of a Madison Avenue 'art' gallery (Art of the Past) was busy trading "fine art and antiquities from South Asia, Southeast Asia, and the Himalayas". His shop had a huge stock (he says of 5000 items) of sculpture, painting, and the decorative arts"ranging in date from the 3rd millennium BC to the early 20th century". His clients included museums such as the Birmingham Museum of Art. But then, a very strange thing happened. A few months ago Mr Kapoor disappeared. Not before threatening fellow blogger Damien Huffer for asking questions about the origins of certain items in his stock. Then gallery's website closed down. What is going on? 

Now allegations are appearing in the Indian press that the gallery owner was arrested back in October last year in Germany over alleged involvement on thefts of sculptures in India. This includes the "sensational robbery of a centuries-old emerald idol of Lord Shiva from Sringeri Mutt in Kalady" three years ago. 
Kapoor is also "believed to have masterminded the theft of 18 panchaloha idols from the Arulmigu Sundareswarar and Varadharaja Perumal temples at Suthamalli village in Ariyalur district on April 13, 2008". Ajay Kanth reports ('Cops unravel New York link to Sringeri idol theft' Times of India May 9th 2012):

State crime branch officials said they suspect Subhash Kapoor, an UP-born US citizen and antique smuggler who runs a gallery in New York, and is the public face of a clandestine international racket in ancient artefacts. Kapoor is allegedly behind a number of idol heists from Tamil Nadu as well, and police here surmise that he is involved in the burglary of five idols, similar to the Sringeri one, from other temples in Kerala. A report of the economic offences wing of the Tamil Nadu police reveals that Kapoor runs a private museum [sic] called Art of the Past and an export company, Nimbus Import Inc, in New York. He specialises in shipping out and selling stolen antiques to museums, private collectors and dealers through a wide network ranging across India, Pakistan, Dubai, Hong Kong, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Cambodia and Thailand. Kapoor was arrested in Germany in October 2011 following a red corner notice issued by the CBI with the help of Interpol. "We will approach the TN police and are planning to make a joint effort to extradite him from Germany," a senior crime branch official, who requested anonymity, told [Times of India]. The TN police report points out that antique idols were shipped from Chennai harbour to US in two batches between May and July 2006. Kapoor paid a dollar equivalent of Rs 1,16,37,694 from his [...] Bank in New York to an accomplice identified as Sanjivi Asokan, suspected to be his point man in Chennai. Asokan was earlier arrested by a special team of the Kerala police in connection with the Sringeri case but it is only now that they became aware of his link with Kapoor.

An earlier article (R Guhambika, 'Interpol notice for idol thief', Indian Express 12 Aug 2011) indicates that the looting gang contained twelve people and they had all been arrested already. The authorities had been alerted by a tip-off and arranged a 'sting' operation in Aruppukottai, Virudhunagar district, and seized some statues  weighing a total of 30 kg and estimated to be 150 years old. Kapoor himself reportedly managed to get out of the country with some other stolen items. The newspaper adding:

“He also had the impudence to appear in a glossy magazine, posing for the camera with the stolen idols of Nataraja and Sivagami in the background,” the officer said. “

Well, let us see if the Indians can get his extradition and whether Mr Kapoor will appear in court. So, what about all those museums and collectors that bought stuff from "Art of the Past" what kind of paperwork did they receive from the dealer guaranteeing that the item was of legitimate origins?  Because even if it was, without the paperwork, if Kapoor is convicted a cloud will hang over it when they want to try and get rid of it - unless of course the collector sells it claiming it came from "a New York collection" and leaves it at that. What really hides behind such vague "provenances"?

Personally, I think threatening archaeobloggers tends not to be a good idea. It may start people thinking whether there is indeed something behind what they say, and might even end up getting you arrested. 

Manhattan D.A.’s Office Returns Lots of Stolen Artefacts from New York Gallery

The Manhattan District Attorney's Office wants us to know that together with the Department of Homeland Security: Press Release, 'Manhattan D.A.’s Office Returns 13 Antiquities to Thailand' April 22, 2021)

Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance, Jr. today announced the return of 13 antiquities valued at approximately $500,000 to the people of Thailand during a repatriation ceremony attended by Thai Ambassador to the United States [...] For many years, the Manhattan D.A.’s Antiquities Trafficking Unit, along with law enforcement partners at HSI, has been investigating KAPOOR and his co-conspirators for the illegal looting, exportation, and sale of ancient art from Sri Lanka, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Cambodia, Thailand, Nepal, Indonesia, Myanmar, and other nations. KAPOOR and his co-defendants generally smuggled looted antiquities into Manhattan and sold the pieces through KAPOOR’S Madison Avenue-based gallery, Art of the Past. From 2011 to 2020, the D.A.’s Office and HSI recovered more than 2,500 items trafficked by KAPOOR and his network. The total value of the pieces recovered exceeds $143 million. The D.A.’s Office first issued an arrest warrant for KAPOOR in 2012. In July 2019, a complaint and series of arrest warrants for KAPOOR and seven co-defendants were filed and an indictment was filed in October 2019. In July 2020, the DA’s Office filed extradition paperwork for KAPOOR, who is currently in prison in India pending the completion of his ongoing trial in Tamil Nadu.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. We know. The fact is that Mr Kapoor did not begin his activities in 2012, but may years before. For a long while a whole load of Asian (mainly) pieces had been passing quite openly through his gallery, and Manhattan D.A.'s office did nothing at all... until the Indians arrested him. Only then did they act.

Just a few days earlier the same DA office returned some stuff to Afghanistan (Tom Mashberg 'Looted Objects From Afghanistan Are Returned' New York Times April 19, 2021). Thirty-three antiquities, many of them delicate lopped-off heads made from stucco, clay and schist, valued at $1.8 million, were handed over to the Afghan ambassador.

The artifacts were part of a hoard of 2,500 objects valued at $143 million seized in a dozen raids between 2012 and 2014 from Subhash Kapoor, a disgraced Manhattan art dealer currently jailed in India on smuggling and theft charges.

(but not yet tried in the US).

An interesting observation from ATHAR:

ATHAR Project @ATHARProject 17 g.
Antiquities market lobbyists are noticeably silent on returns like these.
Saying anything would mean acknowledging that one man—Subhash Kapoor—was responsible for $143 million in trafficked artifacts over just 2 years.
Just 7 Kapoors make this a billion dollar illicit market.

How many high end antiquities dealers are there in the US, Canada and Europe put together?

Kapoor Assistant Pleads Guilty Over Looted Items

Until last year, Aaron M. Freedman assisted in the running of Subhash Kapoor’s art gallery, Art of the Past, on Madison Avenue at 89th Street in Manhattan. He'd worked for the firm 20 years.

On Wednesday, Mr. Freedman, 41, of Princeton, N.J., admitted in New York Supreme Court that he also helped Mr. Kapoor manage the shipment and sale of more than 150 items of looted Indian statuary, items in many cases dating back some 2,000 years. Mr. Freedman pleaded guilty on Wednesday to [felony conspiracy and five counts of felony] criminal possession of stolen property valued at $35 million and agreed, under his plea, to help Manhattan and federal investigators with their prosecution of Mr. Kapoor, who is accused of smuggling more than $100 million in antiquities from India into the United States. Mr. Kapoor, 64, is in prison in India but is expected to be extradited for trial in the United States next year. [...] Authorities said that Mr. Freedman handled the day-to-day details of the gallery for Mr. Kapoor, while also helping to pay off smugglers, concoct false shipping and ownership papers, and arranging for sales to often unsuspecting collectors and museums.

Mr. Freedman’s lawyer, said his client was eager to “take concrete steps to rectify his serious mistakes”. He may well be, but can the damage done by this trade ever be rectified? But as the Chasing Aphrodite blog note, that Kapoor's gallery manager has agreed to cooperate with the authorities "spells trouble for museums with looted Kapoor material". Collectors too I guess.

Rick St Hilaire has a piece on this case. 'NY Heritage Trafficking Conviction Provides a Model for Prosecutions and Investigations', Friday, December 6, 2013. He highlights the role of New York County District Attorney Cyrus Vance, Jr. and Assistant District Attorney Matthew Bogdanos who have demonstrated the will to prosecute crimes that destroy humanity's culture and identity, and points out that this "desire to make a difference is notably in the hands of attorneys in art market-rich Manhattan".

The importance of Wednesday's guilty plea by Aaron Freedman in the Kapoor heritage trafficking case must not be overlooked.[...]   shows that state prosecutions can successfully target heritage criminals, and that state and federal cooperation makes a difference [...] .  Freedman's conviction in state court and under state criminal law --not federal law--sets an example for prosecutors in other state and county jurisdictions to take on these cases too. The message that transnational cultural heritage trafficking cases can be prosecuted in local courthouses like any other large-scale conspiracy or stolen property ring is an important one for prosecutors to hear.

Source: 
Tom Mashberg, 'Assistant to Accused Antiquities Smuggler Pleads Guilty to Possessing Looted Items', New York Times December 4, 2013.


There is a very good account of the Kapoor affair here: Adam Matthews  "The man who Sold The World", GQ India 5th Dec 2013. Credits Damien Huffer. 

More Details of Kapoor Case Emerge

An article in the Hindu newspaper summarises the development of the case against Subhash Kapoor, this however leaves a number of issues not resolved. The reporter suggests that Kapoor was not the first member of his family to have indulged in trading South Asian art objects of unclear provenance and collecting history. His own troubles are reported as starting from the seizure of two consignments sent from India in February 2007 to "the Nimbus Import-Export Corporation in the U.S".

Kapoor [...] had apparently made a rare mistake. Instead of having the consignment, which ICE said in a public statement were worth over $20 million, sent to intermediaries in Singapore, London and elsewhere as per standard operating procedure, Kapoor was said to have committed the error of having it directly sent to him from India. 

Kapoor was questioned by the US authorities, surrendered the contents of the shipment (no mention is made of what happened to them subsqequently) and walked free with a warning. According to the newspaper:

a cooperating defendant reportedly said Kapoor was still looking for fresh artefacts between April 2008 and October 2011. At that time, an anonymous letter was also sent to Homeland Security Investigations in New York (HSI/NY) giving detailed information on Kapoor and his illicit cultural property activities. 

As a result (?) Kapoor was arrested in Europe and ended up in Indian custody.  It is at this stage unclear whether the "cooperating defendant" was the sender of the "anonymous letter". Mention is made of the ICE allegedly recording "admissions of dealing in stolen or looted property, confessions of manufacturing false provenance, documented proof", but whether the author of the article has established that this was in comnnection with the 2007 or a later investigation is not clarified.  The article also mentions a London contact who is alleged to have been involved in antiquities smuggling as one of kapoor's associates and it is also suggested that he is "known" (to whom?) to have been involved in narcotics smuggling. What, if anything, the British authorities will do about any of this remains to be seen.

The text is mainly focussed on the issue of when and how any stolen artefacts will return to India, and stresses the complications of getting correlation between several parallel and ongoing investigations, then of course the legal problems there are going to be getting any identified stiolen artefacts out of the hands of the curators of the several 'major museums' that have acquired them.

Narayan Lakshman, ' Exposing a multi-decade smuggling operation', The Hindu November 11, 2012.

Millions of Dollars' Worth of Antiquities Slipped Unchallenged Through US Customs for Several Years

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"Since 2007, Homeland Security Investigations has repatriated over 2,500 items to more than 23 countries", or some-such stuff is constantly repeated by the federal authorities in one of the world's biggest markets for dodgy antiquities. The number of people guilty of dodgy dealings with those artefacts arrested and tried is far smaller. Probably, if the truth were known, countable on the fingers of one hand.

The scale of what is routinely getting through is vividly illustrated by the seizure today of a large number of items from the Sofia Storage facility on West 83rd Street, New York as part of a Homeland Security Cultural Property, Art and Antiques Program investigation. Authorities seized more than $15 (20?) million worth of sandstone and bronze statues and other Indian cultural artefacts. A number of the pieces are said to be Chola period, and some reportedly still have dirt on them. A federal source said most of the items being recovered are believed to have been stolen directly from temples in India, smuggled to Hong Kong, and then shipped to New York. There had apparently been another seizure in the same investigation, including the seizure of dozens of antiquities worth nearly $10 million from another storage unit allegedly leased by the same person in New York.

Only News 4's cameras were rolling when federal agents uncovered exotic treasures hidden in a storage facility on the Upper West Side.

“The statues and sculptures recovered today are worth millions in the antiquities business, but they are priceless to the nations that they were robbed from,” said James T. Hayes Jr., special agent in charge of Homeland Security Investigations in New York. “These seizures send a clear message to looters, smugglers and dealers to think twice before trying to profit from illicit cultural property in the United States.”

Bla bla. Guess who these artefacts belonged to? Were they being stored on behalf of a fly-by-night smuggler taking the risk he'd not be caught, but foiled by the ever-vigilant ICE the moment he tried to offload dodgy antiquities onto the US market? No, they apparently belonged an established Upper East Side art dealer, Subhash Kapoor, who opened his gallery the Art of the Past gallery on Madison Avenue in 1976 (and Nimbus Import Export Inc. which has been registered at the same address since 2005) and since then has run a dynamic business selling "art of the past" like the items seized in the warehouses to collectors and museums all over the US, and possibly beyond. In contrast to the ICE/HSI bla-bla, it is clear that the current 'owner' of these objects knew he really would not have too much trouble getting this stuff into the US and selling it there quite openly to no-questions-asked buyers.

Homeland Security Investigations agents executed search warrants issued for the storage units, allegedly owned by Subhash Kapoor, the owner of Art of the Past Gallery. The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office also issued an arrest warrant for Kapoor for possessing the stolen property.

Well, the US is going to find it difficult to arrest Kapoor as he was - as I reported here several months ago - arrested in Germany and by the time the US authorities got around to doing anything had been extradited to India where he is presently held behind bars. Only then did the US authorities decide that they ought to look more closely at what had been happening under their noses, despite having been notified by the Indian Consulate about his alleged activities as long ago as February 2007. If Kapoor had not been arrested while travelling abroad and an international fuss kicked up, one wonders just how long it would have taken the US authorities to get around to progressing the "investigation" that had not apparently advanced very far when he left the US last year. Is it not the case that it's only because Kapoor is pending prosecution in another country that the US authorities decided that they'd look pretty stupid if they did not make the effort to learn what was stashed away in his warehouses?

Kapoor is accused of importing goods under falsified import documentation, for example  it is alleged that the US authorities were informed in 2007 that several crates on their way to the US manifested as ‘marble gardens tables sets’ in fact contained stolen antiquities, it is not reported what the US authorities did about it . Kapoor’s gallery has been closed for at least for a month, according to neighboring business. A sign posted on its door says, "Closed for Inventory, via appointment only".

ICE said that some of the artefacts recently seized had been displayed in “major international museums worldwide,” and that other pieces that match those listed as stolen “are still openly on display in some museums”. According to the dealer's website, the gallery has sold Indian art to New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and other prestigious museums. Rick St Hilaire surmises that these museums too may soon have visits from US authorities. And let us not forget the stash of artefacts held in Singapore by Jazmin Asian Arts , some of which - due to an acrimonious court case - are known to have come from Kapoor.

Of course there might be another reason for the warrant, as we all know, American exceptionalism does not like US citizens to be held in foreign jails for offences committed in other countries. Is the warrant for Kapoor's arrest not part of a plan to get him extradited back to the US to face charges against US Customs laws back at home? Since history shows that so few people have been jailed as a result of previous US investigations of this type, we may speculate that any charges against Kapoor in the US might even be dropped the moment he sets foot back on US soil.

Sources:
Jamie Schram, Laura Italiano and Dan Mangan, 'Feds raid Manhattan storage facility containing 'stolen' art', New York Post July 26, 2012

Marc Santia, 'Millions in Stolen Indian Artifacts Seized in Manhattan: Officials', NBC New York, Jul 26, 2012

Kevin Flynn, 'Investigators Seize Antiquities Thought Stolen from India', New York Times, July 26, 2012

Chasing Aphrodite Tracks Down Some Kapoor Ballast

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The Chasing Aphrodite blog has a longish post summarising some of the salient issues of the Kapoor case, including listing some of the museums holding material from Kapoor and the attempts of the blog's authors to prise from the tight lips of some of those museums the answers to some pretty simple questions. One of them is New York's metropolitan Museum:

a search of the Met’s online catalog reveals several antiquities from Kapoor that authorities likely will be interested in — none have documented ownership histories dating to 1972, when India began controlling exports of ancient art. Curiously, the Met also has five stone sculptures from Kapoor in its study collection, here and here, for example. They resemble ancient pieces but are labeled by the museum as “20th Century.” All were acquired in 1991. Did the museum acquire these objects from Kapoor, only to discover they were modern forgeries? We’ve asked Holzer for more information.
UPDATE: Harold Holzer tells us, “The group of 20^th-century forgeries was accepted as a gift along with the other Kapoor gifts for our study collection, and always identified as such”. 

I would say the "resemblance to ancient pieces" is pretty superficial, and both illustrated items are horrible, so it is unclear what kind of "study" one could do with them. It remains unexplained therefore why the museum acquired them, but the donor's motive for giving them is more obvious. Having some modern copies of Indian antiquities imported by Kapoor's 'Nimbus' company not only in the local Museum (just down the road from his shop), but also documented on their website was wonderful cover for the alleged plan to import authentic dodgy dugups and knocked/levered-offs camouflaged among replicas, described as such.  Obviously the fact that he was apparently able to get away with it so long shows that his cover worked. Shipment after shipment of "replicas" came to the New York address which served for both his companies, and nobody noticed what was really in them.

'Kapoor Case: Investigation into Stolen Indian Idols Will Test Museum Transparency', Chasing Aphrodite 30.07.2012

New Information on the National Gallery of Australia Nataraja

SCOOP: New Evidence Of Stolen Idols at the National Gallery of Australia by Chasing Aphrodite. They report on the blog:

In the coming days, ChasingAphrodite.com will publish new information about several of the objects the NGA acquired from Kapoor. The records, obtained from sources with knowledge of the on-going investigations, show that several of the objects were illegally removed from Indian temples shortly before Kapoor offered them to Radford, Maxwell and other NGA officials. Many of the objects were accompanied by false provenance papers. Those ownership histories are belied by evidence seized from Kapoor, including photographs sent to him by smugglers soon after the idols had been removed from Indian temples. 

What is notable is that although the museum pledged to show what they had of the collecting history of the 21 Kapoor objects they house, and the results of further research, they have been very reticent at actually doing so. One of the items concerned is the 130 cm bronze Nataraja, or Dancing Shiva for which in 2008, the NGA paid Kapoor $2 million (see here,  here, here, and especially here for my coverage).  

Kapoor provided the museum with a document stating that he had purchased the bronze from a Washington D.C. man in October 2004. [...] The story of the Washington owner was a fabrication, the records show. [...] In April 2007, Kapoor obtained a certificate from the Art Loss Register saying the Shiva had not been registered as stolen property.

Among the evidence for this was a photo of what seems very likely to be the same Nataraja sent to Kapoor by smugglers in October 2006, soon after it was stolen from the Sivan Temple in the village of Sree Puranthan in Tamil Nadu.  It seems though that nobody willing to fork out Kapoor's asking price was going to ask the question how this item actually came onto the market.

Chasing Aphrodite do not mention that between going missing and coming on sale, the statue 'lost' part of its base, as I pointed out earlier.

Subash Kapoor to be extradited from Germany

Subhash Kapoor, the US-based  dealer in South Asian antiquities who recently nastily attacked fellow blogger Damien Huffer has lost his battle to prevent him being extradited to India. Kapoor was born in Gorakhpur (in Uttar Pradesh), but moved to the US more than three decades ago and set up an antiquities gallery in New York.  The dealer is accused of being involved in the theft of ancient idols from a temple in Ariyalur district. Interpol has agreed to hand Kapoor over to the Tamil Nadu police, who are sending three men to Germany to receive him and take him back.

The probe against Kapoor began in 2008 when then idol wing inspector-general of police J K Tripathy, now Chennai commissioner, received an anonymous email about the presence of many Indian idols at an antique shop in the US. Police were then probing the theft of 18 panchaloha idols from the Sri Sundareswarar and Varadarajaperumal Temple at Udayarpalayamin in Ariyalur on April 13, 2008. [...]  Kapoor is in Cologne prison after being detained at Frankfurt on October 30, 2011. He was arrested based on an Interpol red corner notice when he went there to visit an exhibition. Though Kapoor will be formally arrested in the Ariyalur case alone, the idol wing of the state police is hoping that it will be able extract information from him on other idols stolen from the state..

The Sri Sundareswarar and Varadarajaperumal Temple are in fact sited in Suthamalli village, just south of  Udayarpalayamin Ariyalur district

A Selvaraj, 'Antique smuggler (sic) Subash Kapoor to be extradited from Germany', Times of India, July 8th 2012.

(footnote: "panchaloha idols", sacred images made of a particular alloy).

Photo: The unhappy Mr Kapoor (Singapore Times). 

More Seizures in Kapoor Case

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I've been holding off writing about this one a while, trying to work out what's happening. What is clear is that this is another US photo-op AATS (Apprehended Art Trophy Show) with all the usual bla-bla. But what is behind it is less easy to ascertain from the reports. The gist of the story is that U.S. authorities ('working with India"), have seized five bronze statues, including an antique Goddess Parvati idol worth millions of dollars, stolen from temples in Tamil Nadu in south India and "allegedly sold by [...]  antique smuggler, Subhash Kapoor, who is currently facing criminal charges in India". It is that bit which is the puzzle. Subhas Kapoor was arrested in Frankfurt in late 2011 and extradicted to India July this year to face criminal charges, but:

Special agents with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement's Homeland Security Investigations, in cooperation with the Customs and Border Protection, Dec. 5 seized the bronze Parvati statue and four bronze figures from Tamil Nadu estimated to be worth more than $5 million at the Port of Newark [...] The agents were working in cooperation with the Government of India, Interpol and the Manhattan District Attorney's Office.

It appears that it was only after Kapoor's extradition to India that the US authorities stepped in and actually took a look at what the dealer had in his stockrooms. This was after he'd been operating in the US for four decades (reportedly with only one slipup in 2007 which apparently did not provoke any wider action). So, at the end of July 2012, HSI special agents seized dozens of antiquities with an estimated value of nearly $100 million, including a five-foot tall head of Buddha weighing approximately 1,600 pounds, a bronze sculpture depicting Uma Parvati valued at nearly $2.5 million, and a second century BC Bharhut Stupa Yaksi pillar sculpture valued at nearly $18 million. US officials are now alleging that Kapoor reated false collecting histories for the artefacts to disguise the origins of his illicit antiquities and the routes by which they reached the US. Now the US authorities are making a big thing about the discovery that Kapoor's "alleged smuggling of cultural artifacts worth more than an estimated $100 million makes him one of the most prolific commodities smugglers in the world today" (that's special agent in charge of HSI New York James Hayes quoted there). Well, goodness me. and ALL of that was going on through the barrier of bubbles that is the US Customs system? For forty years? And ICE are just brushing that off and congratulating themselves that though they missed this all going on right under their noses for forty years, but now they've found out? 

This is riduiculous. What however is more worrying is the suspicion that what is really going on is the US might well nothing more than trying to create a case here for Kapoor's extradition back to the US to get him out of an Indian jail. Just like the squaddie who allegedly went out twice at night from a US army camp in Afghanistan, allegedly murdered a whole lot of people in cold blood, set fire to their bodies and then was quickly whisked on a plane back to the US so he does not have to face his accusers in the country where the alleged crime took place. Scandal. Building a Big Case against Kapoor is, I bet, a ruse to get him out of India to face "American justice" where after a show trial where he says "sorry", he gets the slap-on-the-wrist-sentence that the US judiciary hand down in culture-crime cases and sent home. 

This is also very telling, but at the same time confusing:

The ICE said even though the Parvati statue had been placed on Interpol's 'Stolen Works of Art' database, it had passed through the hands of six different dealers over as many years. The statue had been in Europe and was being aggressively pursued by the city's federal agents.

So the object was stolen and started its wanderings six years ago, and has passed through the hands of five other dealers including some in Europe, but it was only seized in the Port of Newark on December 5th this year (?) but is in some way being linked with Subhash Kapoor who has for a year been in foreign jails. Is he now being alleged to have been continuing his activities from his jail cell?  Have these objkects been lost at sea (or in a Jersey port warehouse) for a year and only now turned up? Or is something else involved? Who was the consigner of the seized objects, and what else was in the consignment with the seized items? How did the paperwork describe these objects ?


Sources:
Uttara Choudhury, 'US seizes Parvati bronze sold by antiques crook ‘Indian Jones’...', Firstpost World Dec 7, 2012
[News Dispatches], 'Stolen Statues Worth $5 Million Seized in Newark', India West, Dec 06, 2012

Ardhanarishvara Lost and Found

The statue in situ with a Tamil
inscription above the niche ("Chasing
Aphrodite: from the archives
of the American Academy
of Benares, Varanasi)

The late Chola-era (c. 850–1150) sculpture of Ardhanarishvara (the androgynous form of Shiva and Parvati) with Nandi stood in its place at the Vriddhachalam temple in Tamil Nadu, India for 900 years, despite the passing of history. It was still there in 1974 according to an illustration in Douglas Barrett’s 1974 book Early Chola Architecture and Sculpture 866 – 1014. After that it disappeared. A little bit of detective work has now shown that the statue (1.12 x 0.46 x 0.29m) had been stolen from its original context at the Vriddhachalam temple and 'surfaced' with some dodgy documentation on the no-questions-asked antiquities market.  Enquiries in Tamil Nadu are attempting to determine when and how the sculpture was stolen from the temple.   It is unknown where it was in the thirty years between 1974 and August 2004, when Sydney’s Art Gallery of New South Wales purchased it (220.2004) for more than $300,000 from the prominent Manhattan antiquities dealer Subhash Kapoor. Kapoor provided documents suggesting a collecting history whereby a New York antiquities collector had purchased the sculpture in 1970 from a handicraft dealer in Dehli and held it ever since. This document purports to be a 2003 “Letter of Provenance” on letterhead from Art of the Past, Kapoor’s Madison Ave. gallery. It is signed by “Raj Mehgoub,” who claims to be the wife of a diplomat who lived in Delhi from 1968 to 1971, but on checking, there seem to be no records of a Raj or Abdulla Mehgoub. "Today we can say that ownership history, like others supplied by Kapoor, was fabricated" say Chasing Aprodite who were responsible for helping to track down the new evidence, indicating once again the value of blogs raising awareness of issues. Here is the Chasing Aphrodite blog discussing how the identification was made:

The discovery of the sculpture’s origin is a result of rapid international collaboration. After requests from Jason and The Australian’s Michaela Boland, the Art Gallery NSA released the Kapoor provenance documents on June 25. On June 28th, A. Srivathsan at The Hindu wrote a story about the recent Kapoor revelations with a link to ChasingAphrodite.com. One of the people who read the story was Vijay Kumar the creator of Poetry in Stone [a blog that celebrates South Asian temple sculpture]. Kumar came to this site, saw our post on the Ardhanarishvara and recognized it immediately. Four years earlier, Kumar had published an iconographic study of Ardhanarishvara, the androgynous manifestation of the Hindu god Shiva and his lover Parvati. One of the temple sculptures he singled out as the “perfect form” of the god was in the Vriddhachalam temple [...] When Kumar recognized the Sydney sculpture as the very same “perfect model,” he dug through his files and found the 1974 plate in the Barrett book and other records of the statue, which was well documented in its original context [...] Overall the contours of the kosta block itself are unique as well and offer the vital clue”.

Meanwhile, these revelations raise several questions. Why, since it had been published in at least one book on SE Asian art, did the museum not identify it as stolen before the 2004 acquisition? Why did they not try to follow up the lead given by the 2003 “Letter of Provenance” and determine whether the person signing it actually existed and can confirm the authenticity of the document? Will Mr Kapoor come clean and tell the truth about where he acquired this object, from whom and how it arrived in the US? As "Chasing Aphrodite" ask, when will other museums release provenance information provided by Kapoor? Do they dare, with the eyes of the world on them?


"Chasing Aphrodite", 'Lost and Found: Images Show Art Gallery NSW’s Sculpture Was Stolen From An Indian Temple', July 1, 2013.

Cultural Heritage Lawyer Examines US Antiquities Smuggling

.

Rick St Hilaire has an interesting post detailing some aspects of how Subhash Kapoor got loads of antiquities into the US without anybody taking much notice ('Unveiling the Import and Export of Trafficked Heritage: The Kapoor/Art of the Past Case Examined', Monday, July 30, 2012). His point is that:

Examining the import and export methods surrounding the Kapoor case [...] can help policymakers, criminologists, and scholars think about better ways to detect, uncover, interdict, and prosecute future crimes of heritage trafficking. 

Above all there has to be a will and sense of urgency. This I do not really see, even from this case. As a result of his researching this case, St Hilaire has managed to find details of the initial February 2007 shipment (antiquities described as "garden furniture")  that aroused suspicions, and presents all the details, name of the exporter, importer, shipping company and vessel. What we do not learn is what action was taken by the US authorities at the time against that shipment. Did 1400 kg of (allegedly) dodgy antiquities end up on open sale in the Madison Avenue shop despite the early warning? Where are the 2007 antiquities now? Impounded in a government warehouse waiting for repatriation? If they were seized and proceedings started against the importer, how come the latter, by all accounts, continued import of such items by analogous means? Why when the US authorities intercepted a bunch of antiquities imported under falsified documentation, was the Madison Avenue gallery "Art of the Past" not raided then?

Theflow  of such items continued for another two years, involving a guy called Packia Kumar who ran a company called Ever Star (or Everstar) International Services who exported antiquities camouflaged among copies (it would be interesting to know what the US importer did with those copies). The export papers falsely stated that all the statues in the consignment were recently manufactured as "artistic handicraft products". From ICE press releases relating to seizures of "dozens of antiquities" (some pretty massive) made from January 2012, St Hilaire lists: "the types of cultural objects that made their way to Kapoor in the United States, which went undetected by customs officials at the border". The list is quite an eye-opener.

When Mr Kumar was arrested back in India, did the flow of antiquities stop? Or did Kapoor find (on one of his many trips to the Far East) other methods of trafficking these items? Where does the Singapore episode fit in to the story? What about the shipments through Hong Kong? Were they all organized by Kumar, or were other export companies involved too?  What was Kapoor's connection with Europe?

Kapoor is treated by all the jubilant press releases by the US authorities as some kind of "kingpin" - though without presenting any evidence supporting that claim. The implication is the arrest of this single guy by the ever-vigilant (ha ha) ICE will have severely damaged the smuggling of Southeast Asian antiquities into the US. The less Disneylandish interpretation is that - given the quantity of similar artefacts of unclear provenance on sale through US dealers at present - there are probably a considerable number of individuals with nice little personal business arrangements which are slipping through all sorts of antiquities, major and minor (like coins) through the barrier of bubbles that is the US customs "system". A system which when notified in February 2007 apparently failed to prevent the continuation of the alleged smuggling by this one guy and his accomplices (and open sale of such items to collectors and museums, possibly also other dealers) before actually doing something about it over FIVE YEARS later (even though their counterparts elsewhere were taking more effective action well before that). The US dropped the ball on this one (and how many others?) and the constant flow of, mostly repetitive, "good news" press releases we are currently seeing clogging the Internet seems engineered to hide the fact that in this case the US system took an inordinate amount of time to react (and again, one wonders just to what degree this case would have been prioritised had Kapoor not been arrested in Europe).

Vignette: The US border, a barrier of bubbles for antiquities, and what else?

US Returns 250 Antiquities to India after Belated Probe into Stolen Art

                        Shiva                    

Authorities in the United States have returned about 250 antiquities to India in a long-running investigation of a stolen art scheme. The items, worth an estimated $15m, were handed over on Thursday during a ceremony at the Indian consulate in New York City (Al Jazeera,'US returns 250 antiquities to India after probe into stolen art' 29 Oct 2021).

The ceremony follows a sprawling probe by the Manhattan district attorney’s office and US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which focused on tens of thousands of antiquities allegedly smuggled into the US by dealer Subhash Kapoor, who has denied the allegations [...] Authorities say Kapoor – jailed in India and facing charges there pending a US extradition request – used his Art of the Past gallery in New York to traffic looted treasures from India and various countries in Southeast Asia. The investigation has resulted in the recovery of 2,500 artefacts valued at $143m and convictions of six Kapoor co-conspirators, Vance said. [...] In June, the district attorney’s office returned more than two dozen artefacts worth $3.8m to Cambodia as part of the investigation. Another 33 objects were sent back to Afghanistan in April. Court papers filed in New York say Kapoor went to extraordinary lengths to acquire the artefacts, many of them statues of Hindu deities, and then falsified their provenance with forged documents. They say Kapoor travelled the world seeking out antiquities that had been looted from temples, homes and archaeological sites. Some of the artefacts were recovered from Kapoor’s storage units in New York. Kapoor had the items cleaned and repaired to remove any damage from illegal excavation, and then illegally exported them to the US from their countries of origin, according to US prosecutors.

The Art of the Past Gallery was opened in 1974. He was arrested in Frankfurt in 2011 on suspicion of involvement in illicit trade, and extradited to India in 2012, but has yet to face trial there. It is unclear therefore on what grounds the items were forfeit in the US. All very odd.
Among the items going back was also a bronze Shiva Nataraja valued at $4m

The Shiva Nataraja bronze was sold by the mother of Nancy Wiener, a gallery operator who pleaded guilty in the case this month to charges of conspiracy and possession of stolen property, authorities said. Nancy Wiener sold looted items to major museums in Australia and Singapore, they said.

Heritage Blogger Vindicated

I first became aware of Manhattan antiquities dealer Subhash Kapoor through a fellow blogger writing to me about a legal threat they had received for writing about him. He dealt with that but a few months later Kapoor was arrested in circumstances that are by now well-known. Just a few days ago the dealer was convicted on trafficking charges in India — more than a decade after his arrest. A CID press release cites "diverse dilatory tactics adopted by Kapoor and the co-accused to delay the trial"; apparently preferring life in jail to facing the accusations in court, “the accused Kapoor filed at least seven bail applications and discharge petitions before the High Court, all of which were dismissed. He also filed various applications before the trial court under some pretext or the other to delay the trial…”. Kapoor and his criminal associates were sentenced to 10 years in prison and fined for plundering Indian temples. Indian press is reporting that several more cases are pending against Kapoor. So let that be a warning to dealers threatening bloggers, eh? Just saying.

Vignette: The National Gallery of Australia Returns to India 13 More Works Bought From Now-Imprisoned Art Dealer Subhash Kapoor

 

Kapoor to Face trial in US?

Chasing Aphrodite report that US authorities have finally brought criminal charges against American antiquities dealer Subhash Kapoor and seven members of his alleged smuggling network. It seems that Kapoor himself has been charged with 86 criminal counts by Manhattan DA ranging from Grand Larceny to Possession of Stolen Property and Conspiracy. These charges come seven years after a raid by Federal agents on his Manhattan gallery in July 2012. Interestingly, it is also reported that among those charged was British antiquities restorer Neil Perry Smith, who faces 28 criminal counts related to his work for Kapoor preparing recently looted objects for sale. This gentleman's lawyers were snooping around this blog when I mentioned him in the context of work on some Cambodian objects. Chasing Aphrodite also note "Smith's attorneys threatened legal action when we wrote about him back in 2012". I think conservators everywhere will take an interest in the outcome of these charges. It transpires that another conservator is also mentioned in court documents, Richard Salmon, a British born antiquities restorer in NYC, is reportedly facing 47 criminal counts for his work with the Kapoor network

The five additional people charged are alleged members of Kapoor's Indian smuggling network: Sanjeeve Asokan, Dean Dayal, Ranjeet Kanwar (aka Shantoo), Aditya Prakash and Vallabh Prakash. Collectively they face dozens of additional criminal counts. Kapoor's global antiquities smuggling network is described in staggering detail over the 186 page criminal complaint, 8 arrest warrants and hundreds of exhibits filed in Manhattan courts. A case study like none other.

This promises to be big.

UPDATE
Tom Mashberg, 'Investigators Say a Ring Smuggled $145 Million in Ancient Artifacts' New York Times 11th July 2019. 

Jim Mustian, 'SmugglingArt ring charged with smuggling $143 million in antiquities' APNews 11th July 2019. 

The lead prosecutor, Matthew Bogdanos, told the AP that none of the defendants is believed to be in the United States. He said the authorities asked Interpol to issue international warrants for their arrest.

Subhash Kapoor to be sued for selling 900-year-old Shiva statue in Australia?

The National Gallery of Australia said on Saturday that it will launch legal action against art dealer Subhash Kapoor after it was confirmed that its prized 900-year-old dancing Shiva Nataraja was stolen from India. The NGA, who had paid five million dollars for the item, has approached the Indian High Commission to discuss avenues for its repatriation. The item was listed in court documents in the USA at the trial of Aaron M. Freedman:

which revealed it was "owned by the Central Government of India" after being stolen from Sivan Temple in Ariyalur District of Tamil Nadu. The theft took place between January and November 2006, after which the statue was shipped to New York. The metre-high figure of Shiva surrounded by a ring of fire was then shipped to Australia in October 2007. It is not yet known whether the statue was looted to order or whether the gallery bought it after it had been acquired by US-based Kapoor. Kapoor is being held in India where he is accused of being the mastermind of a USD 100 million antiquities looting enterprise.

The Shiva Nataraja is one of 14 items bought by the NGA for USD 11 million from Kapoor. The other antiquities are from Timor, Afghanistan or Pakistan and India.

Source:
'Indian art dealer Subhash Kapoor to be sued for selling 900-year-old Shiva statue in Australia', India Today December 7, 2013

 

Authorities in Singapore, Take Note?

.
Followers of the varied fortunes of Mr Subhash Chandra Kapoor and his associates will know that he is in custody, reportedly as a result of the revenge of his former girlfriend. She is an art dealer in Singapore, who it is being said gave investigators vital clues that convinced Interpol to issue a notice for the New York dealer that was to lead to his arrest in Germany and his extradition to India on July 14.

Paramaspry Punusamy, 56, owns a "contemporary art gallery" Jazmin Asian Arts 125 Tanglin Road, #B1-01, Singapore, which Google Street View shows is highly incongruously situated in a mock-half-timbered "Tudor Court" (!). She apparently has (had) a whole bunch of ancient sculptures which she says Kapoor gave her. He said he loaned them to her and wanted them back. When they split up, there was even a court case about them and Ms Punusamy hung on to them.

While the court decided that she had been given them by Kapoor, it apparently did not examine whether they were his to give in the first place. If many of the antiquities Kapoor was distributing from his Madison Avenue gallery are now under suspicion of being illegal exports and illicit imports, then presumably the same could apply to those held by Punusamy in her Jazmin Asian Arts gallery. Can she provide full documentation that they left the source country legitimately and were legally exported from a legal source in the country from which they reached her?

What else does former Kapoor-associate dealer Punusamy have in her gallery? Maybe as others who have bought or received antiquities from Mr Kapoor are falling under suspicion of involvement with dodgy goods, Ms Punusamy at the centre of the scandal should also be asked to provide documentation of licit origins of her holdings.

Is the proprietor of a "contemporary art gallery" in SE Asia able to shed light on the origins of the replicas/fakes that were packed together with authentic items to be shipped to New York?

Vignette: Hell hath no fury...    the vengeful Paramaspry (Grace) Punusamy, 56,  in New York in 2007 dressed for the occasion  in a "traditional Indian sari". 

False Collecting History Supplied by MD

Jason Felch's research has turned up another false collecting history for an object sold by a New York dealer ('Ball State’s Kapoor Return Reveals New False Provenance', November 17, 2015). An Indiana museum bought a Chola-period sculpture of Shiva and Parvati from Subhash Kapoor in April 2005 for $100,000.

Kapoor presented paperwork showing it had been in a private collection since 1969. But images seized from Kapoor show he only acquired the bronze in 2004. At the time, it was covered in dirt and missing several pieces

It turns out that the object was sold with a letter which falsely declared that the object had been above ground before 2004. This had been written for Kapoor by Leo Figiel,

a collector of Indian art who died in 2013. The Peabody Essex Museum [...]  acquired Figiel’s collection of antique Indian bronzes in 2006. Figiel provided Kapoor with this false letter claiming he acquired the bronze from “a European collection in 1969”.

One wonders what it is that drives collectors to write and sign letters like these for a dealer. Is this something every collector will do to win a dealer's favour? What to do about the objects collected by people who have no compunction about telling an outright lie for a stranger, how many of them too have a diodgy provenance, possibly fudged by similarly dodgy paperwork? In what other areas of their life might they have been deceitful (this guy appears to have been a doctor)? Do they ever think of the consequences of being caught out lying? Mr Figiel is dead, his family however have to live with this.

Dodgy Dealers Faking Provenance Could be out of Pocket, Hugely

The Dancing Shiva was returned
to India in September 2014,
after it was found to have been
stolen from a temple in Tamil Nadu.

This will be a lesson for any antiquities dealer tempted to supply objects with a false provenance (Anne Barker, 'Dancing Shiva: National Gallery of Australia should get $11m compensation for stolen statue, court rules' ABC News 26th Sept 2016)  

The Supreme Court of New York has granted a motion in favour of a $11 million payment to the National Gallery of Australia (NGA), as compensation for its purchase of a stolen Indian antiquity from disgraced New York art dealer Subhash Kapoor that was later returned to India. The court has entered a 'default' judgement, meaning it was made without hearing evidence from Kapoor, who is in custody awaiting trial in India. 

The NGA in Canberra had bought the statue for $US5 million from Kapoor's New York gallery Art of the Past (AOP) in 2008.

It did so after Kapoor and an AOP gallery employee Aaron Freedman supplied the NGA with documents that purported to vouch for the statue's lawful and legitimate provenance. These included a document certifying that an Indian diplomat Abdulla Mehgoub had lawfully bought the Shiva in Delhi in 1970. Another document — a Letter of Provenance — asserted that his widow Raj Mehgoub later sold the statue to AOP in 2003. The letter purportedly certified that the statue had been out of India since 1971.

The statue had instead been stolen in 2006 from the Brihadeeswarar temple at Sripuranthan and smuggled to the US. The NGA claimed its money back from Kapoor and then sought compensation because "due to wrongful and criminal actions, NGA paid $US5 million for an artefact with a clouded title, and that the NGA had been damaged. " The NGA is considering whether to bring other cases against Kapoor because of other items they bought from him which are now having to be handed back. There are ten of them, and the price paid was in the millions also.

"The NGA is considering all legal options available," the NGA's assistant director Alison Wright told the ABC. [...] "We do believe we are the victims of fraud in relation to provenance supplied by the dealership [...]" Ms Wright said. She said the NGA is committed to investigate the provenance of all 5,000 works in its Asian collection.