By TOM MASHBERG APRIL 14, 2015
The Manhattan district
attorney’s office on Tuesday made public the largest antiquities seizure in
American history and asked a judge to grant it custody of a startling 2,622
artifacts recovered from storage rooms affiliated with an imprisoned Madison
Avenue art dealer.
The artifacts, valued by the
authorities at $107.6 million, were described in papers filed in State Supreme
Court in Manhattan as having been looted from India and other places in
southern Asia and smuggled into the United States by the dealer, Subhash
Kapoor.
In their complaint, prosecutors
said Mr. Kapoor, 65, had cached the items in an assortment of hideaways in
Manhattan and Queens. They were confiscated during raids that began in 2012 and
continued through last year.
The seized items included
bronze and stone statues of Hindu deities, many of them ancient masterworks
worth several million dollars each.
The authorities said their goal
in gaining custody of the items was to set in motion the return of the stolen
objects to India and their other countries of origin. Officials also hope to
prosecute Mr. Kapoor, an American citizen, in the United States. Currently he
is awaiting trial in India on charges of plundering archaeological sites and
conspiring with black market traders to send illicit artifacts overseas.
American officials are planning to extradite him after his case is settled.
Mr. Kapoor, whose defunct
gallery, Art of the Past, sold hundreds of objects to prominent American
museums and collectors, has denied any wrongdoing.
“At the present time we are at
a distinct disadvantage because Mr. Kapoor is in an Indian jail and all the
facts in this matter are known by him,” said Kenneth J. Kaplan, a lawyer for
Mr. Kapoor. Manhattan prosecutors declined to comment on the case.
Since an initial raid on Mr.
Kapoor’s gallery by Homeland Security Investigations agents in 2012, three of
his associates have agreed to criminal penalties in exchange for cooperating
with investigators, according to officials and lawyers. The case, which now
extends to four continents and is being pursued in conjunction with Indian
officials, has been named Operation Hidden Idol.
The recovered artifacts are from India and
other places in southern Asia. Prosecutors said the dealer had cached the items
in an assortment of hideaways in Manhattan and Queens. Credit Michael Kirby
Smith for The New York Times
Mr. Kapoor’s office manager,
Aaron M. Freedman, 43, of Princeton, N.J., pleaded guilty in 2013 to six counts
of criminal possession of stolen property valued at $35 million and, according
to his lawyer, helped officials track down some of Mr. Kapoor’s hidden storage
locations.
In addition, Mr. Kapoor’s sister,
Sushma Sareen, a 61-year-old Queens resident, pleaded guilty in November to a
misdemeanor charge of obstructing justice and was sentenced to conditional
release. In 2013, she had been charged with receiving and possessing several
million dollars’ worth of ancient bronze statues, which remain missing. She is
also cooperating, according to investigators.
Federal authorities have
identified 18 American museums as owning a total of 500 items sold or donated
by Mr. Kapoor. Several museums have recently turned in objects judged to be
illicit, while others have said they are satisfied that their Kapoor items were
legally acquired.
A version of this article appears in print on
April 15, 2015, on page A22 of the New York edition with the headline