Russian Investigative Committee opens case over Scythian Gold and accuses officials from Ukraine and Netherlands

The Investigative Committee of the aggressor country of russia has opened a criminal case into the "theft and non-return" of cultural values ​​from the so-called Crimean collection, known as "Scythian Gold".

This was reported by the representative of the department Svetlana Petrenko.

The proceedings were opened against officials of the Dutch and Ukrainian authorities and the Allard Pierson Archaeological Museum.

Petrenko said that the case concerns 565 museum items that were exhibited at an exhibition in the Netherlands in 2013. According to her, the insured value of this collection exceeds RUB 117 million, which is approximately UAH 35.1 million.

"Officials of the authorities of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, Ukraine and the Allard Pierson Museum stole, gratuitously seized for their own benefit all the specified museum objects that are cultural values, and transferred them to Ukraine without returning them to the territory of the russian federation," Petrenko said.

What is known about "Scythian Gold"

"Scythian Gold" is a collection of archaeological artifacts from Crimean museums, which were taken to the Netherlands in 2013 for the exhibition "Crimea - a golden island in the Black Sea". After the occupation of Crimea by russia in 2014, the exhibits remained in Amsterdam, which caused a long-term legal dispute.

Ukraine and the museums of the occupied peninsula have been suing in the courts of the Netherlands for almost ten years for the right to the collection. On June 9, 2023, the Supreme Court of the Netherlands ordered the Allard Pierson Museum to transfer the exhibits to the National Museum of the History of Ukraine.

In November 2023, the collection was returned to Ukraine. Artifacts from four Crimean museums, previously presented at the exhibition "Crimea: Gold and the Mysteries of the Black Sea", were transferred to Kyiv.

In the same month, 2,694 kilograms of ancient treasures were delivered by truck to the territory of the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra. The identification of the items was carried out by customs officers at the Treasury of the National Museum of History of Ukraine.