According to an FCS Russia press release, customs officers broke up a channel for smuggling cultural valuables from the United Kingdom organised by a resident of Balashikha.
Central Operational and Central Postal customs found that a 54-year-old man used relatives to import decorative and applied art from abroad for resale, filing false sender, recipient and value data in declarations.
He was detained after a relative collected another parcel; searches of his flat and garage yielded porcelain sculptures, copper and spelter pieces, ship’s wheels, binoculars, a samovar, a dagger, clocks, paintings, European army headgear of the 18th–19th centuries and other items.
Experts classified everything seized as cultural valuables worth over RUB 5 million. Criminal cases were opened under Article 226.1(1) of the Criminal Code (large-scale smuggling of cultural valuables), carrying up to five years’ imprisonment.
