Thirty-three artifacts, including statues and artwork, belonging to the Khmer people of the Kingdom of Cambodia will be returned to their native land, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York announced on Sept 13.
The family of the late George Lindemann, a billionaire businessman who was CEO of natural gas pipeline company Southern Union, voluntarily agreed to return the artifacts to Cambodia on Monday, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office. Lindemann died in 2018.
Cambodian officials plan to host a ceremony celebrating the return of the cultural relics.
“For decades, Cambodia suffered at the hands of unscrupulous art dealers and looters who trafficked cultural treasures to the American art market,” said Damian Williams, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, in a statement. Williams said the historic agreement will set the framebook for returning items of cultural significance back to Cambodia under the “U.S.-Cambodia Cultural Property Agreement,” which was first signed in 2003 and renewed in late August.
“It pleases the Cambodian government that the Lindemann family, in possession of these national treasures, knowing they were wrongfully possessed, have duly and voluntarily returned them to their rightful owners,” Phoeurng Sackona, Cambodia’s minister of culture and fine arts, told the New York Times.
The Lindemann family said in a statement to the Times that “having purchased these items from dealers that we assumed were reputable, we were saddened to learn how they made their way to the market in the United States.”
