British Museum returns some of 2,000 stolen items – Kommersant
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The British Museum was able to return some of the 2,000 exhibits that were stolen over several years, said the head of the board of trustees, George Osborne. According to him, the museum, together with the antiques community, is working on the return of the remaining exhibits.
According to Mr. Osborne, 2 thousand exhibits is “a very preliminary figure”, the museum staff is still figuring out exactly how many items were stolen. According to him, among the disappeared exhibits are gold jewelry, precious stones and antiquities up to 3.5 thousand years old. Recently, they have not been exhibited in the museum’s expositions.
“We believe we have been the victim of theft for a long time, and frankly, more could have been done to prevent it. But I promise you this: we are going to clean up this mess,” George Osborne told the BBC. He added that the museum is conducting an independent review led by a lawyer and a senior police officer.
In mid-August the British Museum informed about the loss of gold jewelry, gems, semi-precious stones and glass products. The amount of damage was not disclosed, but according to The Times, it could be 80 million pounds ($102 million). According to the results of an internal investigation, the curator of the Greek collections, Peter Higgs, who worked at the museum for 30 years, was fired.
Due to the revealed theft, resign also gone museum director Hartwig Fischer. He said he did not take seriously warnings that items from the museum’s collection were being freely sold on the online auction site eBay. AP wrote that in 2021, the British-Danish art historian and dealer Ittai Gradel contacted the British Museum with suspicions of theft, but the museum management assured him that everything was in order.
Mr. Gradel told AP that he began to suspect the theft from the museum’s stocks when he was able to buy one artifact on eBay. He traced the exhibit and found that it belonged to the man who gave his entire collection to the British Museum in 1814. At the same time, the artifact was not listed in the museum catalog.
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