The National Police recovered eleven gold pieces worth more than 60 million euros in Madrid, which are part of Ukraine’s historical heritage and which arrived irregularly in Spain in 2016, two years after the Russian annexation of the Crimean peninsula. As reported this Monday by the Ministry of the Interior. Five people were arrested in the operation (three of Spanish and two of Ukrainian nationality), including an Orthodox priest or pope, whom police identify as the suspected leader of a criminal network dedicated to the illegal trafficking of cultural objects in his country. , currently at war. The intervened pieces – “gold jewels of great historical and economic value” from the Greco-Scythian culture of the 8th and 4th centuries BC. C. As the police emphasize in their note, they were to be sold to investors in Madrid through a network of trading companies.
According to sources close to the investigation, dubbed Operation Cuzco, it began “years ago” when agents from the National Police’s Historical Heritage Brigade received information that a citizen of Ukrainian nationality living in Madrid was trying to secretly sell gold antiques from this country as they could not be sold through the usual channels such as auction houses due to their high historical value.
As a result of this investigation, in 2022 the police were able to recover one of the pieces sold to a Madrid businessman in a safe deposit box in Madrid. It was a gold belt with ram heads that was part of an exhibition in a Kiev museum between 2009 and 2013. At the end of the exhibition, the belt and other pieces had ended up in the museum under circumstances that were still unclear. The possession of the Orthodox priest was now arrested. “When there is a context of conflict, as happened in Ukraine in 2014 with the annexation of the Crimean peninsula, looting occurs more easily,” police sources explain.
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After this initial discovery, investigators confirmed that the suspects had other antiquities with similar characteristics that had been imported into Spain before May 2016 through an import declaration that allegedly used false documents to prove their affiliation with the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. Last week, the Ukrainian parliament took the first step to ban the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which is historically linked to Moscow and to which only 4% of the country’s residents are loyal, according to a survey by the International Institute of Sociology in Kiev President Volodymyr Zelensky accused it in December of collaborating with Russia after last year’s invasion.
The investigation revealed that the conspiracy led by the priest had created several commercial companies in which the jewelry had been incorporated as part of the capital, in order to try to give a legal appearance to the ownership of the same and in this way to facilitate their commercialization by a group of investors . Police sources say that this is not the first time that the illegal art trade has revealed the creation of companies to launder pieces of illegal origin, especially when they have a high economic value, as in this case.
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To do this, the network used documents written in Ukrainian, English and Spanish that recorded an alleged transfer of ownership of the treasure and the ability to manage it to the main investigator, the Orthodox religious. To complete the bleaching of the pieces, the network had commissioned Spanish cultural heritage experts to prepare an appraisal and valuation of the jewels, determining their value at over 60 million euros.
Finally, in late September, police carried out the operation and confiscated the other ten pieces as they were about to be sold. During the operation, the priest and the other four alleged suspects were arrested and charged with money laundering. Sources close to the investigation report that among the Spaniards involved – some with a history of fraud – there were people who allegedly helped the network set up the network for a commission, but also investors who wanted to purchase the parts. Police sources emphasize that the investigation is ongoing as there are suspicions that the 11 pieces recovered are not the only ones imported into Spain as part of the illegal marketing conspiracy.
During Operation Cuzco, in which the Ukrainian security service intervened, he worked with the internal attaché of the Spanish embassies in Ukraine, Bulgaria, Albania, North Macedonia and Cyprus. The pieces are located at the National Archaeological Museum and the Institute of Cultural Heritage of Spain for study purposes.
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