Spanish police seize $64M worth of ancient artifacts stolen from Ukraine

By Alyssa McMurtry

OVIEDO, Spain (AA) - Spanish police seized €60 million ($64 million) worth of ancient gold artifacts stolen from Ukraine, they announced on Monday.

Agents arrested five people – three Spanish and two Ukrainian – for trying to sell the 11 pieces in Madrid.

The gold pieces, mostly jewelry, date back to the Scythian era in the period between the 8th and 4th century BC. At that time, Scythians, an ancient Eastern Iranic people, had migrated from Central Asia to modern-day Ukraine and Southern Russia.

Many of the artifacts had been exhibited in Kyiv between 2009 and 2013. After, they were then put in the hands of an Orthodox priest, who colluded with others to forge documents about the provenance of the pieces, according to Spanish police.

Sometime before May 2016, the collection was illegally smuggled out of the country to be sold on the lucrative black market.

Spanish authorities caught wind that someone was trying to sell valuable gold jewelry outside of official channels like auction houses.

Agents then discovered an ancient gold belt with rams’ heads on it in a safety deposit box in Madrid. One of the suspects had allegedly sold it privately to a businessman.

Spain collaborated with Ukrainian experts to discover its origin and that one person involved in the smuggling ring was trying to sell another piece in the collection.

That’s when agents were able to dismantle the alleged criminal network dedicated to the illicit trafficking of cultural property from Ukraine and seize the remaining 10 pieces.

In May, Spanish police led another international operation with the support of Europol and Interpol. It led to 60 arrests and 11,049 stolen artifacts being recovered, including ancient coins, religious sculptures, a Roman marble bust, and 77 ancient Italian books.