Thursday, April 5, 2012

Feds to seize stolen statue from Sotheby's. What a surprise, no ethics at the auction house.

Cambodian union members leafleting about the stolen statue in Phnom Penh.
Sotheby's said it was high class, but that was just a lie. The auction house tried to fence a statue looted from Cambodia's killing fields and got caught red-handed.

Providing further evidence of Sotheby's amorality and arrogance, federal agents are prepared to seize from the auction house the 10th-century statue of a Khmer warrior.

According to the New York Times,
Federal agents in New York on Wednesday moved to seize a thousand-year-old Cambodian statue from Sotheby’s, alleging in a civil complaint that Sotheby’s had put the 10th-century figure of a mythological warrior up for auction despite knowing that it had been stolen from a temple.
This of course does not surprise us one little bit. Only a company with no moral compass and insatiable greed could throw 42 of its own employees out on the street with no paycheck for eight months and no health care for four. Though Sotheby's CEO Bill Ruprecht earns millions, he is determined to pay only poverty wages to the company's art handlers.

Sotheby's hypocrisy extends to its board members. Diana Taylor and Danny Meyer both tout their charitable activities and yet stand aside and allow Ruprecht to impoverish Sotheby's workers. One wonders whether they want more business for their charities or if they're just ethically blind.