In Queens Raid, Federal Agents Seize Artifacts They Suspect Were Looted

Michael Kirby Smith for The New York TimesAuthorities removed artworks from a storage unit in Queens on Tuesday.

The hunt for Indian antiquities allegedly smuggled into New York by Subhash Kapoor, a former Manhattan gallery owner accused of overseeing a $100 million art trafficking ring, led to a Queens warehouse Tuesday where federal officials seized hundreds of Southeast Asian and Indian items that they valued at $8 million.

Agents from the Department of Homeland Security raided the Long Island City warehouse and emptied a storage locker filled with objects from Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and Cambodia, federal officials said. They said the locker was owned by one of Mr. Kapoor’s family members, whom they declined to identify.

In October, the Manhattan district attorney’s office charged Mr. Kapoor’s sister, Sushma Sareen, 61, of Rockville Centre, N.Y., with hiding four bronze statues of Hindu deities, together valued at $14.5 million. Ms. Sareen, who pleaded not guilty, took over Mr. Kapoor’s business, Art of the Past, on the Upper East Side, after he was arrested overseas in 2011.

In December, Mr. Kapoor’s office manager, Aaron M. Freedman, 41, of Princeton, N.J., pleaded guilty to six counts of criminal possession of stolen property valued at $35 million and agreed to help investigators with their case against the Kapoors.

Mr. Kapoor, 64, who awaits trial in India, is accused of hiring looters to steal scores of rare bronze and stone sculptures of Hindu deities. United States officials say he illegally imported the items, created false ownership histories for them, and sold them to collectors and museums around the world. In earlier raids beginning in 2012, they say, they seized more than $100 million in artifacts from locations controlled by Mr. Kapoor.

In 2008, the National Gallery of Australia paid Mr. Kapoor $5 million for a bronze statue it is now returning to India, and the Toledo Museum of Art said recently that it is investigating whether a bronze statue that it obtained from Mr. Kapoor in 2006 is one known to have been stolen from an Indian temple in the early 2000s.

via:http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/03/05/in-queens-raid-federal-agents-seize-artifacts-they-suspect-were-looted/?partner=rss&emc=rss