Bloomberg Businessweek Europe - July 04, 2022

72 Pages·2022·65.1 MB·English

Time for a New
Income Strategy?
Nasdaq 100
Covered Call ETF
QYLD
1 [phone]
GLOBALXETFS.COM
Beyond Ordinary Income®
QYLD writes covered call index options on the Nasdaq 100® Index. By selling covered call options, the fund limits
its opportunity to profit from an increase in the price of the underlying index above the exercise price, but continues to
bear the risk of a decline in the index. A liquid market may not exist for options held by the fund. While the fund receives
premiums for writing the call options, the price it realizes from the exercise of an option could be substantially below the
indices current market price.
Carefully consider the Fund’s investment objectives, risk factors, charges
and expenses before investing. This and additional information can be
found in the Fund’s full or summary prospectus, which are available at
globalxetfs.com. Read the prospectus carefully before investing.
Shares of ETFs are bought and sold at market price (not NAV) and are not individually
redeemed from the Fund. Brokerage commissions will reduce returns. Distributed by
SEI Investments Distribution Co.
THE HEIST IS
Bloomberg Businessweek July 4, 2022
TEAR HERE iuwSOnnouufrmprlaer avnfete imiflfeoe t aneCh lo fiiaursnnri gntbg u’ihrasttol iebr nnbHegieec ndieig snno tttaf ot Id ttseihescnemuicipesort im aoertrnsior g ioathvvnateedkssr e. te auaoMtrrve nneaaiirnnnn w gtgih hsniRe.alo ueegs, op vvti.ehc reiWn oamJudeasenn t.mh. oa6 msA e cnlnodetm f.amt riI otmnuti netldehl eitc ohoUnenSs t, wi ootnfrhu leed s, to
TEAR HERE egWoaIvehf neniB rralit.e eth n ce—iaho Tstefih iionaeosl l nthlEs’ aodosscwi t kiatao nborrtgortih us;eapt sta a grnmmeidaisg kg hBehytl toiaf uncob’gkrel lwAgt rmrhfoeeeinra ngbitdsic b—gasewgntahesocis rwhctih h erto semh’ aaevadkfebset oh s uaia tntnd dh ahl i tiassesn cnytdaseo mtear a ryttk’;ares rutn geeh eo-detuci iltrtno iigfnmo rgenlo- ommatt osetuv rentimrdie yemls reo,w lo ittytnhh ineaenems gr. s ;
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CAMBODIAN ART TREASURES,
2 PILLAGED ANTIQUITIES 1
SCATTERED ACROSS THE EARTH
LUXURIOUS LOOT FROM TIDY BREAK-INS
14 CAT BURGLARIES
IN LA-LA LAND
THE RAPPER, THE NERD, AND
22 CRYPTO HACKS
$8 BILLION IN BITCOIN
Cover: Photo illustration by Chris Burnett
CAN ADT RIDE GOOGLE BACK and 731; photos: Derry Moore
30 ANTITHEFT
TO RELEVANCE?
INDIA’S INSURANCE PAYOUTS
38 FAKED DEATH
OF THE LIVING DEAD
DO NOT LOOK HERE
THE LOTTERY WINNER WHISPERER Y C N A N . E S E B O . T O T
42 LONG ISLAND
ACCUSED OF GRABBING MEGA MILLIONS 96 1 86 1 76
O L A T I . S E Z O O . A N I
66 1 56 1 46
T S I L A R U T A N R E P U S
36 26 16 06 95 85
HOW BLACK-OWNED LAND A R E . A R S . N A M G
50 LOST WEALTH
1 1 1 75 1 65 1 55
GOT SNATCHED AWAY X A T Y T N U O C . S I N M O
45 35 25 1 15
O A S . G O N . . Y A M S I D
05 1 94 84 74 1 1 64 54 44
S P A Y . . P R A H S E . . .
MEET THE MASTER
60 TEXAS 34 24 1 1 14 1 1 1
OF FRACKING SCAMS M E T S Y S E H T E M A G .
1 04 93 83 73 63 1
I R R E H S . . I D E J
1 1 1 53 43 33 1 1 23 13
N O I N I P . . I K S . E L A
62 ABDUCTION AN UZBEK BLOGGER EXPOSED GOVERNMENT O S T A F .03 A1 Z1 A L P92 L1 L O T82
CORRUPTION—AND WAS TORTURED FOR IT
72 1 62 52 42 32
T S A N . Y M A . I M A . . .
22 1 12 1 02 1 1 1
Y E L I A B D N A M U N R A B
SOMEONE ROBBED THE AUCTION HOUSE! 91 81 71
68 DETECTION A L E . S B A R G . T E L N I
THE SPOILS ARE IN THIS CROSSWORD 61 1 51 1 41
D A G . S A P A P . S P S A R
31 21 11 1 01 9 8 7 6 1 5 4 3 2 1
THE HEIS
Bloomberg Businessweek
‘It’s a MAS
Probably the LARGEST
2
PHOTO ILLUSTRATION
BY Chris Burnett
Matthew Campbell
E
R
E
H

RAET Daterheeap t u inbnrr aotvuhegelh itCn agam nbato idtqiruaainft fijieucnskg ialnleg,l nitenhvteew sowtraikyg a ttoo rs PILLAGED ANTIQUITIES
EREH the Metropolitan Museum of Art
R
A
E
T
ST ISSUE
July 4, 2022
SSIVE Crime,
Art Theft in History’
3
THE HEIS
Bloomberg Businessweek
T
he looters arrived late in the afternoon at Koh over $400. From the border, The Peacock and Skanda and
Ker, a ruined 10th century city in northern Shiva, as the two statues became known, made their way into
Cambodia. They made their way through scrubby the hands of a Bangkok-based British businessman named
jungle to Prasat Krachap, a compact stone tem- Douglas Latchford. Not long after receiving The Peacock,
ple dedicated to the Hindu god Shiva and his son Skanda. Latchford sold it to a collector for $1.5 million. Skanda and
They walked carefully. The countryside was strewn with Shiva became part of his own trove of statues.
land mines, and on another expedition some of the looters For more than 40 years, Latchford was the world’s fore-
had watched a wandering cow be blown up. most dealer of Cambodian antiquities. An energetic sales-
The leader of the band, a muscular man named Toek man, he invigorated a once-sleepy corner of the art market,
Tik, had selected Prasat Krachap carefully. As a boy, he’d securing seven-figure prices for objects that p reviously had
been forced by the Khmer Rouge to serve as a child sol- modest commercial value and landing them in the collec-
dier. He escaped in the mid-1970s, disappearing into the tions of institutions including New York’s Metropolitan
forested slopes of a nearby mountain. While on the run Museum of Art. Today his activities are at the center of one
he built up an intimate knowledge of ancient sites, some- of the most complex art market investigations ever under-
times using temples as shelters. This one, he thought, was taken. Government officials and lawyers in the Cambodian
particularly promising. capital of Phnom Penh, academics in Paris, heritage advo-
It was the autumn of 1997, near the end of 30 years of cates in Washington, and federal prosecutors in New York
civil conflict in Cambodia. The men with Toek Tik were all City are all involved, trying to unravel what they consider an
marked by the violence. Some had fought, like him, with historic crime: the theft of Cambodia’s archaeological trea-
the Khmer Rouge, the genocidal communist party that had sures in a campaign of plunder that continued until almost
held the country from 1975 to 1979. Many were enmeshed in the end of the 20th century.
the subsequent c ontests for political control, which pitted Thousands of pieces were taken, robbing Cambodians
what remained of the Khmer Rouge against more moderate of relics that some view almost as physical manifestations
socialists and forces allied with the Cambodian royal family. of their ancestors. Ripped from their pedestals with picks,
4
The looters began digging in Prasat Krachap’s central chisels, and even dynamite, and sometimes broken into
shrine, attentive to the jolt of a shovel hitting stone instead parts for easier transport, these artifacts were dispersed
of dirt. Eventually the contours of several humanlike fig- around the world, repurposed to adorn museum halls and
ures emerged. The men kept digging living rooms in New York, London,
through the night, exposing enough and Palm Beach. The investigators
of the objects to haul them out using are working to track down and repa-
pieces of wood as levers. One of the triate what Latchford sold, a proj-
sculptures, about three and a half feet ect that has only accelerated since
tall, depicted Shiva, his lips in a hint he died in 2020 at age 88, before he
of a smile, sitting cross-legged across could face federal fraud and conspir-
from Skanda, who was rendered as a acy charges.
small boy extending his hands upward Latchford didn’t loot ancient sites
to clasp his father’s. Another statue of himself, and it’s unclear whether he
about the same height showed Skanda ever had direct contact with those
in his adult role as a god of war, sit- who did. Some of his fellow deal-
ting astride Paravani, a thick-bodied ers argue he’s been unfairly vili-
peacock, carved in such detail that fied for operating in a system that
each feather was distinct. Toek Tik he appeared to genuinely believe
and his men were probably the first was ethical. Concern with the ori-
people in centuries to lay eyes on gin of ancient works is a relatively
these works. recent phenomenon, as they point
They loaded the artifacts onto out, and it wouldn’t be wrong to say
oxcarts, straining to lift the heavy that when Latchford began collect-
stone. After days of travel on rutted ing and selling Cambodian antiqui-
country roads, they would transfer ties, almost no one he interacted
them to an antiquities broker near with would have cared where they
the Thai border. Each looter would Skanda and Shiva at Latchford’s home in came from. Artifacts from poor,
receive about 15,000 Thai baht, a little London around 2008 previously colonized countries
July 4, 2022
of Thailand and Vietnam. Its rulers were
heavily influenced by Hinduism—it wasn’t
until after the 1200s that Theravada
Buddhism became Cambodia’s domi-
nant religion—and they demonstrated their
power by commissioning ever-grander
temples and religious statuary, carved in
stone or cast in bronze by corps of arti-
sans. Angkor represented the height of the
Khmer kings’ ambitions, and it’s hard to
imagine what it must have been like for
Latchford to experience the site as it was
when he first saw it: remote, overgrown,
and almost devoid of visitors, a window
into a lost world of heroic warriors and
Latchford with one of deep religious belief.
his statues In Bangkok, Latchford accelerated
his acquisitions, enabled by the growing success of a
drug company he founded and, later, investments in the
city’s booming real estate market. His collecting inspired
comparisons to a man he admired: Jim Thompson, the
swashbuckling American spy who became a noted connois-
seur of Asian art before he d isappeared without a trace in
1967, earning a permanent place in Bangkok lore. By the
mid-1970s Latchford qualified as a significant collector and
55
dealer, sometimes working in collaboration with Spink,
a London auction house later acquired by Christie’s. His
condominium, in a building he’d developed himself in
the heart of the Thai capital, was essentially a museum
of Khmer statuary. There he welcomed a steady stream
of brokers offering artifacts for sale, some of them freshly
obtained from runners who’d brought objects across the
border. He kept more pieces in his second home, a luxu-
rious apartment in London’s Mayfair district.
Meanwhile, Latchford was developing a hobby: funding
the operations of the Thai national bodybuilding association.
He served for a time as its president and played “a  vital part
in Thailand winning many gold medals” at international com-
petitions, according to current head Sugree Supawarikul. As
a result, Latchford was surrounded for much of his life by a
shifting cast of young Thai bodybuilders.
Although he had a brief marriage to
a Thai woman with whom he had
a daughter, Julia, he became more
open about his sexuality over time,
and some of the bodybuilders may
have been his lovers. Others served
as drivers or personal assistants,
sometimes trusted with traveling to
the Cambodian border to examine
statues being offered for sale. In the
Bangkok Post, Latchford boasted
that his “bodybuilder chef” had
THE HEIS
Bloomberg Businessweek
6
A temple at Koh Ker
ST ISSUE
July 4, 2022
won a gold medal for his class at the Stability finally returned in the early 2000s under
Asian championships. Latchford was “a the authoritarian leadership of Hun Sen, a onetime
visual man,” a longtime friend told me, Khmer Rouge soldier who’d switched sides, serving in
asking not to be identified because of the the Vietnamese-backed government of the 1980s before
stigma of being associated with him. For some prevailing in the power struggles that followed. (Hun Sen
of the same reasons Latchford was drawn to remains prime minister today, leading a government that
Khmer artworks, “he just liked to have these human-rights groups condemn for intense repression of
guys around to look at.” political opponents.) Cambodia was growing more acces-
For much of Latchford’s adult life, the coun- sible, as long as you didn’t wander unescorted in heav-
try whose heritage obsessed him ily mined rural areas, and Latchford became
was effectively off-limits. A civil war a regular visitor. In 2002 he made a trip to
began in Cambodia in 1967, culminat- Koh Ker, helicoptering in with Emma Bunker,
ing with the victory of the Khmer Rouge a Colorado-based researcher with whom he
eight years later. Their leader, Pol Pot, worked closely.
used his newfound power to initiate one The site was the Khmer Empire’s capital
of the darkest periods of the 20th cen- for less than 20 years, a brief pause in the
tury. Agriculture was collectivized, lead- dominance of Angkor. But during that time,
ing to widespread famine, while residents Koh Ker’s sculptors developed a style dis-
of cities were marched into the countryside tinct from the stoic, angular statues seen in
and forced to work under slavelike conditions. other Cambodian sculpture. Their figures are
Adoration and Glory
Militants targeted anyone suspected of connec- almost sensual, with full lips set in expres-
tions to capitalism or foreign cultures or of deviating from sive faces. Some are depicted in motion, as though they
the Khmer Rouge’s extreme interpretation of Marxism. might leap from their pedestals at any moment. Latchford
More than 1.5 million people were killed. The party’s rule found them captivating and bought them when he could.
ended in 1979, when invading Vietnamese forces installed Some he sold to wealthy collectors, such as Netscape
7
a proxy government that restored a degree of normal- co-founder James Clark, who spent $35 million on more
ity. But the Khmer Rouge continued to fight, launching a than 30 pieces from Latchford. Investigators believe that
stubborn insurgency. others ended up in the Palm Beach home of the pipeline
Archaeologists and collectors couldn’t easily visit the tycoon George Lindemann. (Lindemann died in 2018; his
Cambodian countryside, which was strewn with millions son didn’t respond to requests for comment.)
of land mines. Looters who knew the terrain could operate Adoration and Glory, which Latchford co-wrote with
more easily, particularly after the violence wound down in Bunker, hinted at just how many significant Cambodian
the 1990s. Today, trafficking experts view the period as some- statues had passed through his hands. The book featured
thing of a golden age for antiquities theft. Looting was so finely staged photographs of almost 200 works, largely res-
widespread that the Conservation d’Angkor, a storehouse of ident in Western museums or private collections; many,
artifacts in Siem Reap, Cambodia’s second city, was attacked it appeared, either belonged to Latchford or had moved
at least three times. On one occasion, a group of as many as through his operation at some point. It also included fore-
300 raiders took 31 statues, killing a guard in the process. words from three of Cambodia’s most senior cultural offi-
While Angkor Wat and its environs were eventually secured, cials, whom he’d cultivated by donating money to spruce
few other temples were, and thieves secreted thousands of up the National Museum in Phnom Penh. One of the offi-
K Khmer objects out of the country, leaving shattered pedes- cials, the museum’s then deputy director, Hab Touch,
E
E
W
S tals and empty alcoves. marveled at the breadth of what Latchford had assem-
S
E
N
SI For Cambodians, the cultural damage was immense. bled. “The first time I saw the photographs,” he wrote, “I
U
B
G “When I see the stone destroyed, I ask the question, ‘What realized that while I work with Khmer art every day I had
R
E
B
M kind of greed and ignorance would drive someone to only been familiar with a small proportion of what exists.”
O
O
L
B destroy this?’ ” said Phoeurng Sackona, Cambodia’s min-
R
O
F I
TI ister of culture and fine arts, who’s been closely involved n 2007 a British stone expert named Simon
T
E
OL in efforts to track down stolen objects. “But at the same Warrack was working at Koh Ker, collecting
F
O
ST time, I need to understand the situation.” Decades of con- data for potential conservation efforts. As he
RI
C
S flict had devastated the economy, and there were few walked around Prasat Chen, one of the ancient
A
M
O
H legitimate job opportunities. The international market city’s major temples, he spotted a pair of upright stone feet
T
Y
B
H for Khmer a ntiquities was robust, creating incentives for on the ground. Warrack was intrigued enough to take some
P
A
GR theft that were hard for some to resist. photos, but he didn’t give much more thought to the find.
O
T
O
H
P
Bloomberg Businessweek
Not long afterward, in a library in Siem analyzed 377 Khmer pieces put
Reap, he came across Adoration and Glory. up for auction at Sotheby’s from
“Suddenly, t urning over the page, and there was 1988 to 2010. She found that 71%
this big, huge statue with no feet,” Warrack told me. had no published provenance;
“It tripped something in my mind.” The statue, a spectac- for the rest, the information was
ular 5-foot-tall “temple guardian,” was listed as belonging often fragmentary.
to the Norton Simon Museum in California. Warrack took Still, some law enforcement
a photo of the page, then merged it in Photoshop with agencies were beginning to take
a picture of the feet from Koh Ker. “It fitted at all three a closer interest in looted art,
points,” he said, “which is more than a coincidence … there among them the Department of
was absolutely no doubt.” Homeland Security, which has
By leaving the feet behind, looters had allowed Warrack jurisdiction over imports to the US.
to locate a crime scene: the spot from which one of the After Bourdonneau sent Unesco a
most significant Khmer statues in any foreign collection report identifying the Sotheby’s
had been hacked away. He wrote a memo that was sent warrior as the lost Duryodhana,
to Unesco, the United Nations agency responsible for cul- DHS agents contacted the auction
tural heritage and the overseer of a 1970 treaty, accepted house, warning that the statue
by more than 100 countries, that lets governments demand could be stolen property. The
the return of objects removed without authorization piece was pulled the same day it
after it entered into force. Warrack suggested that a more was supposed to go on the block—
detailed investigation was in order, but Unesco’s efforts though Sotheby’s head of compli-
didn’t get very far. ance at the time, Jane Levine, said
Coincidentally, Eric Bourdonneau, a French archaeologist in a letter to Unesco that she was confident the Duryodhana
who has conducted some of the most detailed research at was out of Cambodia prior to 1970 and that Sotheby’s and
Koh Ker, was interested in the same pair of feet as Warrack its c lient didn’t intend to repatriate it. If the Cambodian
8
and another pair found just inches away. Bourdonneau government wanted it back, it was welcome to “purchase
believed the Norton Simon statue, which had been in its the sculpture in a private sale.”
collection since the 1970s, to be a representation of Bhima, Federal prosecutors in New York disagreed with Sotheby’s
a protagonist of the Mahabharata, the Sanskrit epic. That claims. They launched a forfeiture action, which allows the
meant the other feet probably belonged to Duryodhana, government to seize property it believes is linked to illegal
a warrior who fights Bhima in one of the poem’s key bat- activity, and demanded that the auction house relinquish
tles. But Bourdonneau had no idea where that Duryodhana the Duryodhana so it could be returned to Cambodia. The
statue had gone. So he was astonished when he saw the prosecutors ultimately claimed it had been looted in the
promotional materials for an auction that Sotheby’s was early 1970s and would have been protected by Cambodian
holding in New York in the spring of 2011. They showed a law even before that date. After being taken out of the
5-foot-tall stone warrior in the distinctive Koh Ker style— country, they said, the Duryodhana and its counterpart,
the Duryodhana. It had been purchased in the 1970s by a the Norton Simon’s Bhima, were “obtained by a well-
Belgian b usinessman and been consigned for sale by his known collector of Khmer antiquities” who knew they’d
widow, with an estimated price of as much as $3 million. been stolen from Koh Ker. “The collector then attempted
At the time, attitudes toward the origins of artworks to sell [the Duryodhana] on the international art market,”
in international collections were in flux. Prompted by consigning it to a British auction house, which ultimately
demands for the restitution of pieces stolen by the Nazis, found the Belgian buyer.
museums and auction houses had by the 1990s begun to It was clear to anyone with the r elevant background that
require more detailed provenance information, ideally the “collector” was Latchford. He told the New York Times
establishing a full chain of ownership. In theory, 1970, that the prosecutors were mistaken, saying he’d never actu-
the year of the Unesco treaty, was considered a cutoff for ally owned the Duryodhana. Yet whatever his connections to
dealing in objects such as Cambodian statues. If a seller that specific object, he was on the radar of US law enforce-
couldn’t prove that an artifact was abroad earlier or that ment in a way he’d never been before.
a home government had granted explicit permission for
W
its removal, its sale would be illegitimate. In practice, that hen, in 2012, the US Department of Justice
constraint was sometimes ignored, particularly for works needed to hire a consultant in Cambodia for
from poor countries without the resources to press their the Duryodhana case, the natural choice was
claims. In a 2011 study, the Antiquities Coalition’s Davis Brad Gordon. The head of a firm that worked