The UK has opened a case on the theft of the "Crimean collection" of cultural property

The Investigative Committee (IC) of Russia has opened a criminal case on the theft and non-return of cultural property from the so-called "Crimean collection." This was announced on March 11 by the official representative of the department Svetlana Petrenko.

According to the investigation, in 2013, museums in Germany and the Netherlands signed contracts with Crimean institutions for the alternate display of 565 museum items within the framework of the exhibition "Crimea — the Golden Island in the Black Sea". Their insurance estimate is at least 117 million rubles, the market value is much higher. Some artifacts are priceless due to the lack of analogues.

"Officials of the authorities of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, Ukraine and the Allard Pearson Museum stole, gratuitously seized in their favor all of these museum objects that are cultural values, and transferred them to Ukraine, without returning them to the territory of the Russian Federation to date," the Investigative Committee said in a statement.

After the reunification of Crimea with Russia, the museums and exhibits became the property of the Russian Federation. However, after the exhibition, the cultural treasures remained in the Netherlands. In 2021, the Amsterdam Court of Appeal refused to return the collection to the Crimean museums and ordered them to transfer the exhibits to the Ukrainian side. As part of the investigation, all the circumstances and the persons involved will be established.

Artem Studennikov, director of the first European department of the Russian Foreign Ministry, said on February 11, 2024, that Moscow does not rule out that the Scythian gold transferred to Kiev may suffer a sad fate and the artifacts may be lost.

On November 27, 2023, Ukrainian customs reported that a truck with 2,694 kg of cultural treasures known as "Scythian gold" entered the territory of the Kiev Pechersk Lavra. Commenting on this news, the head of Crimea, Sergey Aksyonov, said that the Russian Federation should not regret this, as it was clear that the items would not be returned to Russia.

Dmitry Peskov, the press secretary of the Russian president, said on the same day that the Scythian gold should definitely be in Crimea, since it belongs to the peninsula. The official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Zakharova, on November 29, 2024, noted that an attempt to cover up the actual theft of Scythian gold calls into question the impartiality of the Dutch judicial system. She also called the transfer of values to Ukraine "absolutely unconscionable from the point of view of universal morality."

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