[MSN] Suspect in Hermitage Theft Is Released

[Museum Security Network Mailinglist]

Suspect in Hermitage Theft Is Released
The Moscow Times

Prosecutors in St. Petersburg have dropped all charges against Ivan Sobolev, who had been detained in the theft of nearly $5 million in artifacts from the State Hermitage Museum, Interfax reported Monday.

Sobolev, a lecturer in the history department at St. Petersburg State University, was released from the pre-trial detention facility where he had been held since early August.

Police told Interfax that Sobolev had been implicated only in thefts that occurred before 1995 and that the 10-year statute of limitations had therefore expired.

A routine inventory at the Hermitage this summer revealed that 221 items had gone missing. Thirty of the items have since been returned to the museum by collectors and antique dealers.

Sobolev was one of three suspects detained in the theft. The other two were the son and husband of the late Larisa Zavadskaya, a curator who worked in the section of the museum where the thefts occurred.

The son was subsequently released after promising not to leave the city, leaving his father, Nikolai Zavadsky, as the only suspect still in police custody.

Zavadsky's lawyer said in August that his client had admitted to pawning the art works in order to pay for his diabetic wife's insulin. Zavadskaya died suddenly last year at work at the start of the inventory that revealed the stolen items.

The theft shocked the cultural establishment when it became pub

http://www.themoscowtimes.com