Employees of the SBU and the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine were caught stealing paintings from a museum
In Vinnitsa, 4 high-ranking officials, including those from the leadership of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Security Service of Ukraine, were convicted of stealing paintings from a local museum.
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As noted in court decision, back in 2006, criminal cooperation began between the head of Vinnitsavodokanal, who came up with the criminal scheme, the head of the inter-district department of the Ukrainian State Security Service in the Vinnytsia region, the deputy head of the Uman regional department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the director of the Uman local history museum.
The scheme for stealing paintings by contemporary Ukrainian artists looked quite simple: the director of the water utility, and then the head of the SBU and the deputy head of the regional department, addressed the director of the local history museum with an official letter, in which they asked to temporarily provide a certain number of paintings for holding thematic exhibitions in the buildings of these government bodies. While the paintings were in the possession of swindlers in uniform for several months, little-known artists from different regions of Ukraine painted copies of them.
As you might guess, copies were returned to the museum, and the originals ended up with criminal art lovers, and then were sold to private collections and have not yet been found.
The partners acted on a grand scale, so they quickly lost their vigilance, and their criminal activities were stopped.
The court sentenced the criminal quartet to imprisonment from 4 to 5 years with a probationary period of 3 years with confiscation of property.
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