The British Museum is shaken by an incredible theft case, “chaos”, recognizes its head

United kingdom – Several hundred lost treasures. In London, the famous British Museum was exposed to a series of thefts of artwork, some dating back to the fifteenth century BC. This case, which has been helping the art world for several days, led to his resignation on Friday 25 August. Museum director Hartwig Fischer has been in office for 7 years.

And on Saturday 26 August, George Osborne, the museum’s president and former Conservative minister, gave an impressive estimate of the number of objects stolen over the years. When asked about the BBC on Saturday, he indicated that he did not know precisely how many things were missing but “ I’d give an estimate of about 2,000.”.

But what happened? On August 16, the British Museum issued a statement saying it had identified the missing pieces in its collections, without providing further details.

According to the newspaper The Independent, The items are stolen “Small jewels, precious stones, and pieces of gold.” There is no complete inventory of his collections obtained over several centuries. The stolen works were not shown to the public and were preserved in the museum’s reserves.

After these discoveries, the British Museum, the third museum in the world in terms of the number of visitors, said that it had dismissed one of the museum employees, while the London police said that it had interrogated a man, without naming him, but did not initiate any prosecution. .Country.

“We could have done more to prevent these thefts.”

The head of the museum confirmed that many of the stolen pieces had already been recovered. “Some of them ended up on eBay, selling for far less than their real value.”pointing to BBC. This is also how the museum was alerted to the issue: an antiques dealer had discovered artifacts at the resale site and reported it to the manager at the time.

“He who knows innumerable things has great merit.”George Osborne admitted, believing the museum “ The process already underway to create a complete inventory should be accelerated.”. “It’s a mess and we’ll clean up.” he added.

Announcing the thefts was a blast for the museum and ‘Damaged the reputation of the British Museum’, according to George Osborne. “ We believe we have been victims of theft over a long period of time, and frankly more could have been done to prevent it. »

“Was there at that time a conviction within the museum, at the highest level, that refused to believe that an insider was stealing things, or to believe that a staff member was doing it? Yes, it is very possible.”George Osborne admitted.

Founded in 1753, the British Museum houses, in particular, in its collections of eight million pieces the famous Rosetta Stone, a stele that enabled the decipherment of hieroglyphs.

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