The National Police have recovered in Madrid 11 pieces of gold valued at more than 60 million euros belonging to the historical heritage of Ukraine that had been stolen seven years ago and illegally exported to be sold in Spain.
In collaboration with the security services of Ukraine, the agents have arrested five people - two Spaniards and three Ukrainians - as suspects of a crime of money laundering and who formed a criminal network dedicated to the illegal trafficking of cultural property from that country. The General Directorate of the Police has reported.
The jewels, which had been part of the collection displayed in an exhibition at a Kiev museum between 2009 and 2013, left Ukraine illicitly before May 2016.
After the exhibition, the pieces ended up in the possession of an Orthodox priest who, in connivance with a second Ukrainian and third parties, falsified documents proving their ownership.
All the pieces, which belong to the Greco-Scythian culture of the 8th and 4th centuries BC, are being studied at the National Archaeological Museum and the Cultural Heritage Institute of Spain, so the police investigation remains open.
The first investigations of the so-called Cuzco operation began when the agents learned that a series of gold jewelry of great historical and economic value from Ukraine were being sold by a Ukrainian citizen living in Madrid.
Since the pieces could not be sold through the usual channels such as an auction, given their illicit origin, the jewels were incorporated into the capital of different commercial companies that were created for said cause, in order to give them a legal appearance and thus facilitate their sale by a group of investors.
The gold pieces were accompanied by documents in Ukrainian, English and Spanish to try to prove that they belonged to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which in turn had transferred them to the Orthodox priest, the main investigator.
At the request of the members of the criminal organization, Spanish experts in cultural property prepared reports on the 11 pieces, which they calculated to have a value of 60 million euros.
The first intervention, of a gold belt with rams' heads, dates back to 2021, after which the Police managed to prove that those investigated had more similar pieces.
In 2022, a similar belt was intervened, finding the rest of the pieces in the following months.
The investigation has had the collaboration of the Interior Attaché Office in Bulgaria, Ukraine, Albania, North Macedonia and Cyprus, as well as the International Cooperation Division of the National Police.
