Stolen Scythian gold worth EUR 60 million seized in Spain

This is reported by BBC.Ukraine.

Jointly with the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU), the Spanish police arrested five participants of the illegal scheme, including three Spanish citizens and two Ukrainians. Law enforcement officers liquidated a criminal network for the export of cultural property from Ukraine.

According to the police, in 2016, 11 antique gold items were taken from Ukraine for resale in Madrid: bracelets, necklaces, and earrings dating back to the eighth and fourth centuries BC, with forged documents claiming that they belonged to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate).

When Spanish intelligence agents learned that a Madrid resident had sold a series of gold jewelry of great historical and economic value in Ukraine, they launched an investigation involving the offices of the Attachés for Internal Affairs of Bulgaria, Ukraine, Albania, North Macedonia and Cyprus, as well as the International Cooperation Department.

To confirm the Ukrainian origin of the jewelry, the services attached documents in Ukrainian, English and Spanish confirming their affiliation with the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. They also found that the participants in the scheme had authorized an Orthodox priest living in Madrid to dispose of the jewelry.

Ukrainian archaeologists report that Scythian gold was looted in the Ukrainian territories occupied by Russia after the start of the full-scale Russian invasion, and the damage from Russia's theft of Ukraine's historical and artistic heritage is estimated at hundreds of millions of euros.

• On Friday, October 20, 14 cultural property stolen by Russia from the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine were unpacked at the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra National Reserve.