George Ortiz (1927–2013) was a collector who assembled what is considered to be one of the "finest collection of antiquities in private hands".
His father, Jorge Ortiz Linares, was Ambassador of Bolivia to France, and his mother Graziella was the daughter of the Bolivian tin mining magnate Simón I.
[4] In 1978 Ortiz held an auction to sell many of his collected works from Africa and the Pacific to recover the reported $2 million that he had paid the year before as ransom when his daughter had been kidnapped.
[6] Included in that collection was the Motonui epa, Māori carved wood panels from a storehouse, that Ortiz had purchased for US$65,000 then taken to Switzerland.
[8] After years of negotiation, and Ortiz's death in 2013, the Motonui panels were purchased by the New Zealand government for NZ$4.5 million, and in March 2014 they were deposited in Puke Ariki Museum in New Plymouth.