The National Police have recovered in Madrid eleven pieces of gold valued at more than 60 million euros belonging to the historical heritage of Ukraine, which had arrived irregularly to Spain in 2016, two years after the Russian annexation of the Crimean peninsula. as reported this Monday by the Ministry of the Interior. In the operation, five people have been arrested (three of Spanish nationality and two of Ukrainian nationality), among them an Orthodox priest or pope, whom the police identify as the alleged leader of a criminal network dedicated to the illicit trafficking of cultural property from 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 going to be sold in Madrid to investors through a network of commercial companies.
According to sources close to the investigation, baptized as Operation Cuzco, it began “years ago” when agents from the Historical Heritage Brigade of the National Police received information that a citizen of Ukrainian nationality living in Madrid was trying to clandestinely sell antiques. of gold from this country, since, due to their high historical value, they could not be sold through the usual channels, such as auction rooms.
As a result of these investigations, in 2022 the Police were able to recover in a safe deposit box in Madrid one of the pieces that had been sold to a Madrid businessman. It was a gold belt with ram heads that had been part of an exhibition held in a museum in Kiev between 2009 and 2013. At the end of the exhibition, the belt and other pieces had ended up, in circumstances not yet clarified, in the possession of the orthodox priest now arrested. “When there is a context of conflict, as occurred in Ukraine in 2014 with the annexation of the Crimean peninsula, it is easier for cases of plunder to occur,” explain police sources.
After that first discovery, the investigators confirmed that the suspects had other antiques with similar characteristics that had been introduced into Spain before May 2016 through an import declaration in which false documentation had allegedly been used proving that they belonged to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. Last week, the Ukrainian Parliament took the first step to ban the Ukrainian Orthodox Church – with historical ties to Moscow and to which, according to a survey by the International Institute of Sociology of Kiev, only 4% of the country’s inhabitants are faithful ― operate in the country after President Volodymyr Zelensky accused it in December of collaborating with Russia after last year’s invasion.
The investigations revealed that the plot led by the priest had created several commercial companies in which the jewelry had been included as part of the capital to try to give legal appearance to the possession of the same and, in this way, facilitate their commercialization by a group of investors. Police sources detail that this is not the first time that, in illegal art trafficking, the creation of companies has been detected to launder the irregular origin of pieces, especially when they have a high economic value, as was the case in this case.
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To do this, the network used documents written in Ukrainian, English and Spanish in which an alleged transfer of ownership of the treasure and the ability to manage it to the main investigator, the Orthodox religious, was recorded. To complete the whitening of the pieces, the network had commissioned Spanish experts in cultural property to report and carry out an appraisal of the jewels, which established their value at more than 60 million euros.
Finally, at the end of September, the police carried out the operation and seized the other 10 pieces when they were going to be sold. In the operation, the priest and the other four alleged suspects were arrested, accused of the crime of money laundering. Sources close to the investigation detail that among the Spaniards involved – some with a history of fraud – there were those who had allegedly helped the network create the corporate network in exchange for a commission, but also investors who intended to acquire the pieces. Police sources emphasize that the investigation remains open due to suspicions that the 11 recovered pieces are not the only ones that the plot has introduced into Spain for illicit marketing.
In Operation Cuzco, in which the Ukrainian Security Service has intervened, it has had the collaboration of the Interior Attaché Office of the Spanish embassies in Ukraine, Bulgaria, Albania, North Macedonia and Cyprus. The pieces are found, for study, in the National Archaeological Museum and in the Institute of Cultural Heritage of Spain.
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