[MSN] Possible ringleader in Hermitage theft detained

[Ellie Bruggeman]

Possible ringleader in Hermitage theft detained

Russian police have detained a man they believe may have organized the theft of artifacts from the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, according to news reports on Friday.

The suspect is the fourth person detained since Russia's famous museum announced on July 31 the theft of 221 items worth over $5 million.

Earlier this week Nikolai Zavadskaya, the husband of the late curator, confessed he and his wife stole some of the items, which included religious icons, silverware and jewelry. The curator's son and a St. Petersburg antiques dealer have also been detained.

Suspect may have been the mastermind

Russia's Interfax news agency cites unidentified police sources as saying the fourth detainee may have been the mastermind.

"According to the investigation's findings, he colluded with Hermitage custodian Larisa Zavadskaya and her husband Nikolai in the early 1990s. After that, he was involved in organizing the theft of exhibits from the museum and helped the [couple] to commit the crimes," a police source told Interfax.

Hermitage director Mikhail Piotrovsky said in an interview published Friday he suspected the Zavadskaya family had not been working alone.

"I personally believe that apart from Zavadskaya and other suspects, someone else knew what was going on. This is a person of some weight or even an organized structure," the Komsomolskaya Pravda daily quoted him as saying.

Zavadskaya confessed he and his wife were responsible for the theft of only 53 of the artifacts. He said he and his wife needed the money to buy insulin for her diabetes, which she could not afford on her salary of 3,000 roubles ($125 Cdn) a month.

She died of a heart attack last year during an inventory of the repository she guarded.

Putin orders inventory of treasures

Since the announcement, Russian president Vladimir Putin has ordered an inventory of all the nation's cultural treasures to begin by Sept. 1.

Authorities have recovered 16 of the stolen items. On Thursday, police retrieved a gold and silver cross and two icons from a railway luggage office after a tip from an anonymous caller.

The thefts have shed a poor light on the security and record-keeping of Russian antiquities throughout their cultural institutions since the 1991 Soviet collapse.

The announcement earlier this week of the disappearance of a famous architect's drawings from state archives added to the impression that security and record-keeping of Russian antiquities have been grossly neglected since 1991.

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