Latchford: the dark side of Malraux

The high walls topped with barbed wire in Golden Valley, Yangon’s most exclusive neighbourhood, concealed many mysteries. The most elegant villa belonged to a French designer who was rumoured to be, or to have been, an agent of the SDCE, the Service de documentation extérieure et de contre-espionnage, the former French secret service. The villa also housed his showroom, but when I attempted to return there a few years later, it had been closed and the Frenchman had vanished—rumoured to have done so to escape his powerful wife. In a neighbouring villa, a storeroom had been set up where statuettes, sculptures in wood, stone and bronze, colonial furniture, silverware and objects from various parts of Burma were collected. The owner was a corpulent, unsavory-looking man. Later, I attempted to locate that warehouse, but it appeared to have vanished along with its proprietor: he had been imprisoned for reasons that remained unclear.

Upon reflection, it appears that those figures, especially the second one, bore a striking resemblance—even physically—to "The Man Who Stole the Gods," as recounted in a book of that title by Matthew Campbell, a reporter for Bloomberg BusinessWeek. Of course, there are many differences between them – in their methods, whether more or less violent or legal, and in their spheres of operation, be it Burma, plundered by the first two, or Cambodia, ransacked by the third. But it doesn’t matter: they are all protagonists of that heart of darkness, of that jungle of mirrors that is South-East Asia. It is also because of this evocative power that the book is a perfect example of investigative journalism and non-fiction narrative. That man is the Englishman Douglas Arthur Joseph Latchford, known as ‘Dynamite’ Doug because of the method he used to recover the archaeological treasures scattered throughout the Cambodian forests. He described himself as an ‘adventurer scholar’ and perhaps because of this aspect of his character, some have compared him to Malraux, the writer, politician and adventurer who has come to represent the archetype of that kind of person.

In reality, Latchford wanted to be Malraux but failed to transform the looting into art, as Malraux did when he drew inspiration from the theft of two sculptures from an Angkorian temple for "The Way of Kings", nor did he manage to turn the adventure into a human and social commitment, as Malraux would have done and described in "The Human Condition". He was one of those ambiguous characters who, from the 1970s onwards, used South-East Asia as a playground to enrich themselves and indulge their vices.

Thanks to his contacts both with Angka – Pol Pot’s organisation, which had turned Cambodia into a branch of hell and had stripped the country of its works of art to fund itself – and with the Vietcong, who transported them along the Ho Chi Minh Trail, Doug became one of the leading traffickers of Khmer art. His main clients included institutions such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, as well as private collectors such as Netscape co-founder Jim Clark, who decorated his Miami penthouse with Khmer sculptures valued at 35 million dollars.

Latchford died in Bangkok on 10 August 2020, but his fortunes had been in decline for years, ever since the US authorities had begun investigating his dealings. These investigations led to the return of over two hundred works to the Cambodian government, including those from his personal collection. However, many others have disappeared into the ‘Blood Antiquities’ market, as demonstrated by recent revelations that Russian oligarchs are laundering dirty money through the art market.