Original subtitles

(dramatic electronic music)

is one of the world's greatest museums.

On August 1st, 2006,

its director made a dramatic announcement.

Over 200 items worth around $5 million were missing

from its store of Russian precious metals and jewelry.

All hell broke loose in the press.

There were calls for the director to resign.

The shockwaves reached the Kremlin

and President Putin himself intervened.

The police were quick to make arrests.

Their investigation revealed an antiquated system

of stock checking and lack security

and they blame the thefts on museum insiders.

But in the complex world of post-communist Russia,

plagued by organized crime, corruption,

and political intrigue,

the truth is never easy to find.

Soon there were suggestions of police brutality

and a shocking allegation of murder at the museum.

It's very possible

that she was killed as a witness they'd rather do without.

And fears of a darker conspiracy

to damage the museum and force regime change

at the Hermitage.

Quite a lot of people in the history of Russia

and Soviet Union who have been dreaming of getting somehow

into the cellars of Hermitage.

So will the real criminals

behind the theft ever be found?

(dramatic music)

(calm music)

Often known as the Venice of the north,

the city of St. Petersburg is built

on a network of rivers and canals

at the point where the river Neva flows out

into the Gulf of Finland.

It was founded in 1703 by the Russian Tsar Peter the Great

as his new capital and is a city of baroque palaces,

magnificent cathedrals, grand boulevards,

and vast squares.

At the heart of the city is the Winter Palace

built by the Empress Elizabeth in the mid 18th century

as a home for the imperial family.

It was the storming of the Winter Palace

by the Bolsheviks in October 1917

which ushered in the revolution

and 70 years of Soviet rule,

an event immortalized with famous inaccuracy

by the film director Sergei Eisenstein in his film October.

Today the palace houses

what is possibly the greatest museum in the world.

It contains the collections of the czars

and most of the best works of art confiscated

from the Russian aristocracy at the time of the revolution.

This museum, Hermitage,

an extremely important institution in Russia,

very symbolic one.

It's not exactly a reflection of Russia,

it's always a little bit better than Russia

so if it is bad, it means something is very wrong.

Around three million visitors a year flock

to view the stunning palace interiors

and the unique treasures they contain.

Catherine the Great was one

of the most important art collectors

the world has ever known.

She hung her Rembrandts around her billiard room.

There are 25 left in the Hermitage today.

The first serious patron of the French artist, Matisse,

was Russian.

His collection was nationalized after the revolution

and makes the Hermitage a place of pilgrimage

for connoisseurs of impressionist

and post-impressionist art.

The treasures combine superb metalwork

from the ancient world,

sacred art from the churches of Europe and Russia,

and the jewel encrusted trappings of the czars.

But only 5% of the museum's total collection

is ever on show in the galleries of the former palace.

The other 95%, nearly three million items,

is tucked away in storage

and only emerges, if ever, for special exhibitions.

Keeping tabs on this vast hidden collection is the job

of the museum's 150 or so curators,

organized into seven specialized departments.

This great museum is run by a huge bureaucracy,

reminiscent of the time of the czars.

So how could more than 200 items

from a single museum department go missing,

presumed stolen?

The story of the thefts at the Hermitage began

with a routine business of checking the storage inventory.

It's done on a rotating basis, department by department.

In August 2005, it was the turn of the collection

of Russian artifacts made from gold, silver,

and precious stones.

Some come from churches and cathedrals.

Others are made for personal adornment or domestic use.

The highlights of this collection are on display

in the museum's treasuries.

When the check was completed,

it became apparent there was a major problem.

The first to be told was the museum's director,

Mikhail Borisovich Piotrovsky, a professor of Arab history,

is one of Putin's key advisers on culture.

He has been director of the Hermitage since 1992,

succeeding his father who died two years before.

I was told by head of the Russian department

that something is wrong,

something is looks to be missing,

so we begin to check

and when it was fully checked,

we have seen that many objects are missing.

What the inventory revealed was shocking.

In total, 221 objects listed in the records

couldn't be found in the storerooms.

More than half were 19th century icons

with silver covers, set with jewels.

Many of the others were sacred items,

silver and enamel chalices and crosses,

and there were also a few items of domestic silver.

They had disappeared from high-security storage

over a period of about 10 years

and the sheer number was staggering.

It was shock for me, for our colleagues,

for Dr. Piotrovsky, for everybody.

No one in our department or in the Hermitage could expect

that something terrible, something like that one,

could happened.

The museum had to face facts.

Over $5 million worth of precious antiques had disappeared

right under their noses.

The question was who was responsible?

We began to think about the results,

about the events, about the people,

who would and who could do it.

There was soon a prime suspect for the thefts

but she was no longer around to be questioned.

This is Larisa Zavadsky.

She was the curator in charge of most

of the missing items and had been leading the audit.

She had worked at the Hermitage for 30 years

but three months into the checking process,

in November 2005, she died at her desk.

Apparently of a heart attack.

It was only when a new team of curators took over

the inventory check after her death

that the thefts were discovered.

And now we are going downstairs from my office

to the office of Larisa Zavadsky.

And now we can see this small room, it's her office,

her computer, her chair.

Just at that table, just near computer,

she died on 8th of November, 2005.

Larisa Zavadsky was only 51 years old.

She had been in charge of her section for 20 years

and had contributed to many books in her field.

She left behind a husband and a 25 year old son,

both called Nikolai.

(Nikolai speaking in foreign language)

She started working for the Hermitage

before I was born.

As a person, she was a forceful and serious woman.

She loved me and my father very much and cherished us

and she was always very upset

when there were any internal conflicts within the family,

even when there was nothing in it.

She took part in many exhibition projects,

she follow our items to exhibitions inside Russia or abroad.

All the years she worked in our department,

she was very beautiful specialist, good specialist.

She wrote many articles, she remembered all the items.

Many years really we working together with her

and she was one of great

and I think that for my mind I not find, behind that,

I don't find anything strange.

But despite her good record,

the museum authorities decided

that so many items could not have disappeared

from her collection without her knowledge.

But did she take all the items herself

or had she been blackmailed or bribed

into helping others to rob the Hermitage?

Larisa's son doesn't accept either story.

Instead he claims she was unaware of any thefts

and shortly before her death had even spoken herself

of finding gaps in the collection.

(Nikolai speaking in foreign language)

As far as I know,

she discovered that some items were missing.

It just seemed that they were nowhere to be found

in the store and I think that she reported it

to the management.

If she did report the problem to a superior

at the museum, no one has admitted it.

But could her own anxiety about the thefts

have caused her untimely death?

She was known to suffer from poor health.

(Nikolai speaking in foreign language)

I only know that she had serious problems

with her health.

Problems with her heart, diabetes.

Unfortunately I don't know any further details.

Sometimes she was ill, hurt,

and so on, so on, so on, so on.

And she died really immediately

and it was natural death.

Natural death.

After the shock of Larisa Zavadsky's death,

a second blow for her colleagues was the possibility

that a museum curator could have been stealing

from her own collection.

Hermitage curators are renowned for taking great pride

in the works entrusted to them,

treating them almost as their own treasured children.

We couldn't believe for a long time that she could do it

of course because we believed her very much.

Still don't believe that she was the only one involved

but well, it was a shock.

Larisa Zavadsky's death may have been

a personal tragedy

but the theft from the museum had much wider implications.

A public announcement had to be made.

In bureaucratic Russia, Dr. Piotrovsky's first priority was

to report the thefts to government officials in Moscow

before they heard the bad news from anyone else.

What I think was very important to report it in the way

so that the officials will know this before the press.

Because usually in Russia and St. Petersburg,

if you report something to the police,

in five minutes the press knows it

even before the head of the police will know the thing.

The Russian President Vladimir Putin

was the first on his list.

Putin grew up in St. Petersburg

and has often organized diplomatic events at the museum.

Then he put in a call to Mikhail Shvydkoi

at the federal agency for culture and cinematography.

Mr. Piotrovsky called me of course,

and this was a short discussion

because we discuss about who will talk with press

and who will decide to the museum administration

must talk with press (mumbles).

On the 1st of August 2006,

nine months after the death of Larisa Zavadsky

and only a few days after the final confirmation

of the thefts, Dr. Piotrovsky summoned the media

at short notice

to Catherine the Great's neoclassical theater

in the Hermitage.

It's a stab in the back,

a stab in the back for the Hermitage

and a stab in the back for the museum community

at a time when we are trying to fight for our autonomy

and our rights.

He revealed to journalists

that 221 items were missing from the storeroom

of Russian precious metals and jewelry

and that the curator responsible had died at her desk

nine months earlier.

It was old tradition in Russia and also in Hermitage

to keep quiet if something happens,

something is missing.

It was and is still tradition of many museums of the world.

I saw that we have to go out with this

because if you lie or you cover things,

you will make a lot of mistakes afterwards.

The following day,

the Hermitage put a complete list of missing items

and 21 photographs on its website

with an appeal for any information.

The public announcement sparked an immediate

and surprising response.

Just 24 hours later,

the St. Petersburg police received an anonymous tip-off.

A 19th century icon depicting the Assembly of Saints

had been left in a garbage bin in the city.

The head of the Police Art Squad, Vladislav Kirilov,

was filmed lifting the icon to safety

and showing it off to the Russian television cameras.

It was number 97 on the list.

Its distinctive silver gilt frame studded

with precious stones.

Who had dumped it or why was not revealed.

But it didn't stop there.

The next day, August 4th,

it was the turn of a Moscow gallery, Orthodox Antique.

Its owner Vladimir Studenikin had studied

in an orthodox seminary and was a passionate collector

of Russian sacred art of the kind

that featured so heavily on the Hermitage internet list.

(Vladimir speaking in foreign language)

I started doing some research

to find out whether I had any of these objects

in my collection and I found one of them, a chalice.

The description is very similar and there was a photograph

and I compared it and concluded that it was the chalice

that had been stolen from the Hermitage.

Studenikin had bought the silver

and enamel encrusted chalice two years earlier

after identifying it as an important and valuable piece.

(Vladimir speaking in foreign language)

It was obviously made by a good craftsman

and it was made in a good workshop.

It wouldn't have come from a small provincial church,

it would have belonged to a large cathedral.

So obviously it had a lot of artistic,

historical, and cultural value.

He had paid over $13,000 for the chalice

but Studenikin decided to hand it over to the authorities.

He chose the Federal Agency for Cultural Security in Moscow,

the government body in charge

of protecting Russia's cultural heritage.

(Vladimir speaking in foreign language)

In Moscow,

we maintain close business contacts

with many antique dealers who are extremely careful

about their names and their reputations,

so they prefer to return these valuables

through our service.

Anyway, at the end of the day,

we pass all the evidence to the investigators.

(dramatic music)

In the days after the museum made

its dramatic public announcement of the thefts,

the scandal now threatened

to overwhelm the Hermitage director.

It seemed someone was out to get him.

A concerted press campaign demanded his resignation.

(man speaking in foreign language)

As far as my personal resignation

is concerned, I read recently in a paper

that in all museums around the world,

if something untoward happens,

the director always resigns.

And in the Louvre, the director would have gone.

Similar events have occurred in the Louvre

and no director has resigned.

As for my resignation, don't hold your breath.

In today's Russia,

it's said that press coverage can be bought by the yard.

The media campaign was so virulent

that Piotrovsky was convinced it had been paid for.

The preparedness to have a big response

and telling much more about Hermitage, against Hermitage,

that Hermitage deserved in this situation

meant that all this was prepared.

The kind of campaign we had in Russian press

and electronic press,

it's a campaign which costs a lot of money.

Not everyone agrees.

(man speaking in foreign language)

If our readers

and our listeners hadn't shown a big interest

in the subject, if everybody was totally indifferent

to the problems of the museum collections,

believe me, the press, the two, three, or five newspapers,

or the two TV channels wouldn't have been able

to give this story such extensive coverage.

You must understand, this accident was in summertime

when they are usually in summer around July, August too,

we have not enough events.

Of course everybody have an enemy

if people in the 50s or 60s haven't enemy,

they lived the very sad life, you know.

I have a lot of enemy too, is normal.

But the Hermitage director was now certain

his enemies were busy plotting his downfall.

In an effort to discover the truth,

Piotrovsky had already asked his head of security

to carry out an inquiry.

Alexander Khozhainov had been recruited six years before

from the Art and Antiques Squad

of the St. Petersburg police.

He is proud of his past as an investigator,

the medals he won, and his old colleagues on the force.

But with the thefts making international news,

the investigations by the museum

and the St. Petersburg Police were soon overtaken by events.

The procurator's office in Moscow,

the state prosecutor took charge.

(Alexander speaking in foreign language)

The crime was so serious

and had such resonance not just in Russia

that it was taken under control

of the state prosecutor's office

and a special investigation group was set up.

It consisted of officers

from the state investigation department

and from our own antique squad.

The team based themselves in the museum.

From the start, they focused on Larisa Zavadsky

and her family.

Husband Nikolai was a history lecturer

who worked in the Sports Institute

of St. Petersburg University.

His son describes his personality

as a stark contrast to his mother's.

(Nikolai speaking in foreign language)

No, he's a very gentle person.

Gentle and could be easily influenced.

Really he's far too trusting.

Maybe as a result of this, it all turned out so badly.

But in Larisa Zavadsky's husband,

the authorities had an easy scapegoat.

(Alexander speaking in foreign language)

I think it's true that he took part

in the thefts but it seems to me

that only Larisa Zavadsky could reveal the whole truth

about how it was all carried out.

Sometimes her husband visited her here

in the Hermitage of course, and her son too.

Sometimes she visited here on Saturdays,

maybe on Sundays, I don't know,

and on working days too.

Investigators soon had their second target,

Nikolai Jr.

He now clears imported cars through customs

but for a while he also worked inside the Hermitage,

a position secured for him by his mother.

My mother helped me to get a job

at the Hermitage, I think in 1997,

in the Department of Scientific Documentation.

At that point, I liked it.

At that point, I wanted to have a career

as a scientific researcher.

In the department, there was a minor conflict

with the management and later it emerged

that actually it was a conflict

between my mother and the management.

I was sacked and moved to another department

but a few years later,

I realized that the place wasn't for me

and putting it mildly, I realized

that they didn't want me there and didn't like me very much.

Not surprisingly perhaps,

this period of work at the Hermitage only raised suspicions

that he had conspired with his mother

to steal from the museum.

(Alexander speaking in foreign language)

I think it's not true

that the son did not know about what was going on

at the Hermitage, especially given

that he worked here as well for some time.

I first learned about the thefts

on television.

I vaguely heard some TV report

that there was some sort of scandal at the Hermitage

and that some objects had been stolen.

(Nikolai speaking in foreign language)

My father and I didn't have a chance

to discuss it properly.

We wanted to talk to the investigators

to tell them what we knew

and somehow help them in every way to find some clues

for the crime.

The Zavadskys would get their chance

to talk to the investigators sooner than they expected.

The family's home is in an apartment building

in the north of old St. Petersburg.

In a dawn raid on the 5th of August 2006,

police arrived to arrest both father and son.

(Nikolai speaking in foreign language)

In the best KGB traditions,

in the early morning the police arrived

and took us to their antiques department

and after that I found myself in prison.

The cells for prisoners under interrogation

but not yet charged are in the former headquarters

of the KGB known as the Big House.

On the nearby river embankment sit the sculptures

of two Sphinxes, designed by the sculptor Shemyakin in 1995.

Located over the drain where in the Soviet era,

the blood of tortured prisoners flowed out into the river.

(Nikolai speaking in foreign language)

In fact, there were just two questions.

Where are the stolen items and where is the money?

I told them I don't know.

The police now had their prime suspects

in custody but there would soon be further arrests

and, as the story unfolded,

evidence that other darker forces may have been at work.

Yet more investigations began.

Two agencies from the Ministry of Culture in Moscow

dispatched teams to the museum

to figure out why the inventory

and security system had failed.

They soon uncovered further mistakes

in the way the museum staff had logged their collections.

More had been stolen than they first thought.

(Boris speaking in foreign language)

Our staff confirmed the absence

of the correct checking procedure in this department

and the absence of these particular objects.

Furthermore, they subsequently found

that there were a further six objects missing

in this collection.

So was there a fatal flaw

in the way the Hermitage collection was stored

and protected?

In an age of sophisticated technology,

the system of keeping track of items at the museum

was more like something from the age of the czars.

Even now the Hermitage staff are still reluctant

to swap their dusty old books for computers.

It's a question for discussion

because you can write by your hand

and everybody knows that it's your hand.

Computer inventory, it's a toy, it's a gimmick,

but it's not a real inventory.

Real inventory must be on paper.

This is one of the inventory books of our museum.

There are the numbers of every item in our museum.

The description and the sizes for example,

technique, condition.

I believe more this old system.

It's my own opinion.

Also under scrutiny were

security arrangements for the storerooms.

Access to Larisa Zavadsky's store

of Russian precious metals is through two nondescript doors

in the walls of one of the museum's public galleries.

We are just near the first door to the storage

where Larisa worked.

And to enter, it is supposed to be only for the curators.

All the doors are closed,

keys the special electronic system,

and the personal seal of the curator.

The doors to Larisa's storage remain barred

while the investigation continues.

But for any curator to gain access to their collection,

they must follow a standard security procedure.

(Alexander speaking in foreign language)

The procedure is at the pass control office

they get their keys and nowadays an access control card

and then they proceed to their place of work.

There they switch off the security alarm.

Curators can then unlock the doors

to their storages, mainly located in the hidden quarters

and rooms formerly used by the palace servants.

They sign in the book

and according to the rules,

the curator is never alone in the storeroom.

The European porcelain storage is organized

along the same lines as Larisa's would have been.

Cupboards installed before the revolution are secured

using a thin strip of wire and an imprint

from the curator's individual seal.

So how could Larisa Zavadsky have stolen and stolen again,

removing pieces from the museum stores

without being challenged?

The commissions from Moscow examined security procedures

at the staff exit,

a set of doors to the rear of the building

on the banks of the river Neva.

Could Larisa Zavadsky simply had carried out the items

one by one, hidden in her bag?

The metal detector was only installed three years ago.

Perhaps Larisa managed to evade it.

Nobody never opens their bags

from the permanent staff of Hermitage

when they come in and come out from Hermitage.

Never.

Mrs. Zavadsky was well known

for people from security service

and nobody never can image this.

They must look in the bag

or make some security procedure for her.

Well, curators have certain privileges

and nobody can search people carrying out

of the museum according to the law.

Only policemen can search a person

and only special situation.

So if you work in the museum,

you can always find a lot of ways how you can take it

because museum is based on trust.

Had Larisa Zavadsky betrayed that trust?

Her husband and son were now being held by the police

for questioning.

But the day after they were taken in for interrogation,

investigators made a third arrest.

They were following a completely different line of inquiry.

They had begun to trace back the ownership of items

that had been returned.

The silver and enamel chalice handed over

by Moscow gallery owner Vladimir Studenikin

had been bought in 2004 from a Maxim Shepel,

a St. Petersburg collector and art dealer.

(Vladimir speaking in foreign language)

I have known Maxim for a few years

and I know only positive things about him.

I know him as a good person,

as a collector who has a good reputation,

and I couldn't imagine that he would be mixed up

in this scandal.

When he offered to sell me this object,

I was sure that it couldn't be stolen

and I think that Maxim himself would not have bought

this object either and got mixed up in the story.

Shepel was arrested on August 6th

and questioned by investigators.

He told them he'd bought the chalice

in a St. Petersburg junk shop.

But bizarrely, three days later,

he was transferred to the psychiatric ward

of the police hospital.

The police claimed he had driven a pen

3 1/2 centimeters into his own eye.

Was this possible?

His wife thought not.

(woman speaking in foreign language)

Officially it was self-harm

due to psychiatric disorder.

I don't believe it

because my husband has a phobia about pain.

On top of this, I'm 1,000% confident

that he would never harm himself.

So did investigators inflict the injury

in their haste to secure a quick conviction

in such a high-profile case?

If so, the tactic didn't work.

A week later, he was released through lack of evidence

and still hasn't spoken publicly of his experiences.

(Vladimir speaking in foreign language)

I feel guilty about Maxim

because I had to reveal where I bought my object

to help the investigation.

And so the situation is unfortunately the way it is now.

But if the arrest

of Shepel had drawn a blank,

police soon announced a dramatic breakthrough in the case.

They claimed Nikolai Zavadsky Sr. had confessed

to selling more than 50 items stolen

from his wife's collection at the Hermitage.

The damning evidence had apparently come

from one of the city's pawn shops.

In Russia, pawnshops are known as Lombards,

reflecting their origin in the Italian region of Lombardy.

They offer the traditional pawnshop service,

paying in advance on a valuable item

which can later be reclaimed.

But they also buy and sell antiques and jewels

in the normal way.

It emerged that a Lombard located

at number 13 Lenin Street had supplied police

with receipts for around 50 items

they claimed to have bought from the Zavadskys.

All had apparently appeared on the Hermitage list

of missing items but were no longer in the hands

of the pawnshop owner.

He refused to be interviewed for this program

but conveniently his evidence seemed

to be all the police needed to sew up the case

against a Zavadsky.

The following day on August 10th,

police arrived at St. Petersburg's Moscow station

after another cloak-and-dagger tip-off.

Inside one of the luggage lockers,

they discovered a plastic bag

containing two small paintings

and an 18th century silver gilt crucifix.

The next day, the owner of a second pawn shop came forward

in person with the silver gilt cross he had seen

on the list of missing items.

He also had further damning evidence

on the Zavadskys' involvement.

(Alexander speaking in foreign language)

In August 2005,

Larisa Zavadsky came to our store several times.

She brought some quite attractive items

which she wanted to sell.

She told us a very dramatic story

about some friends of hers who'd been in a car accident

and were in the hospital

and they needed to sell their possessions to raise money

to pay for their treatment.

The second time she came,

she brought a silver gilt cross dating

from the middle of the 18th century.

We managed to agree a price and we bought it.

Alexander Prokhorov identified Larisa

as the main negotiator

but also implicated her husband Nikolai in the sale.

(Alexander speaking in foreign language)

The first time,

he was just waiting for her in the car outside.

We didn't see him.

The second time he was walking around the shop,

looking at various things,

and only when we came to an agreement

and decided to buy the cross,

she told us she didn't have any ID with her

and asked her husband to show us his documents

and be listed as the seller.

Nikolai Zavadsky signed a receipt for the sale

and the couple left with 20,000 rubles,

around $800, less than 1/10

of the price Prokhorov believes he could have sold it for.

Almost exactly a year later,

Prokhorov saw reports of the Hermitage thefts.

He retrieved the cross from the shop's safe

but after what happened to Maxim Shepel,

he felt he needed impartial witnesses present

when he took it to the police.

(Alexander speaking in foreign language)

We called the radio station Moscow Echo

and the journalist came here.

Then they called the police

and negotiated a meeting for the next day.

The journalists were prepared to be mediators

or just observers

to make sure the whole procedure was absolutely legal

and that our rights were not compromised in any way.

On the same day

as Prokhorov's deliberately public hand over,

police made a fourth arrest, Ivan Sobolev,

an historian who had worked with Nikolai Zavadsky Sr.

at the Institute of Physical Culture and Sport in the 1990s.

Zavadsky had apparently told police

that Sobolev had encouraged them to begin stealing

from the Hermitage.

He had even sold two icons for them in 1994.

Investigators wanted to see if he too could be implicated

in the sale of so many Hermitage treasures.

On the 17th of August, three more items were left

at the headquarters of the Art Squad.

A silver gilt crucifix dated 1731,

an icon of Saint Nicholas with a silver cover,

and a fake Faberge dog given to the Hermitage

by the courts after the prosecution of a famous forger.

The Hermitage staged an exhibition

after 31 pieces had been returned,

most as a result of anonymous tip-offs.

Just as it seemed that the prosecution case was complete,

there was a surprising new twist.

On the 23rd of August,

Nikolai Zavadsky Jr. was released

from prison without charge.

He maintains his innocence

and is convinced that his father confessed

to thefts he hadn't made

in a deal to secure his son's release.

(Nikolai speaking in foreign language)

In my opinion,

my father made his confessions under pressure

from the investigators because as I realized,

I was arrested as a hostage

so that my father would take the blame

for the whole crime and all the thefts.

And when my father signed everything the police wanted,

they let me out.

For Nikolai Jr.,

the crucial evidence supplied

by the two pawnshops was flawed.

(Nikolai speaking in foreign language)

Yes, my father did in fact take some things

to pawnshops but these were things

which belonged to our family, his parents.

We had some antiques at home

but they belonged exclusively to our family

and had nothing to do with the Hermitage.

He has particular doubts

about the origins of the 50 incriminating receipts

from the Lenin Street Lombard.

(Nikolai speaking in foreign language)

50 receipts from one pawnshop?

I think, what, they faked them?

As far as I know and from what my lawyer told me

and my father's lawyer told me at the time,

even the handwriting and the receipts didn't look

like my father's.

The receipts were filled out in a different hand.

Alexander Prokhorov was also surprised

that his Lenin Street competitors

hadn't blown the whistle earlier.

(Alexander speaking in foreign language)

If I was in a situation

where the same person again and again brought

some precious objects to the shop,

I would definitely become suspicious.

It wouldn't seem normal to me, not normal these days.

Nikolai Zavadsky believes

that his father did a deal with the police.

If he confessed to stealing a large proportion of items

and went along with the story

of selling it all to pawn shops,

his son would be released.

So had Nikolai Sr. made a false confession?

The fourth man arrested

in connection with the thefts certainly thought so.

Ivan Sobolev had been seized

after Nikolai Sr. identified him

as the initiator of the thefts.

He had sold two icons for the Zavadskys in 1994.

Under Russian law, defendants cannot be prosecuted

for a crime committed more than 10 years earlier,

so Sobolev was released without charge.

But only after three months in prison.

Immediately after his release,

he talked to the St. Petersburg weekly newspaper,

(speaks in foreign language), Your Mystery Advisor.

He described the pressure

the investigators were putting on Zavadsky

to implicate his former colleague in the thefts.

At a meeting on the 15th of August,

he denied virtually everything he had said

and written about me earlier.

As far as I understand, he was then visited

by the chief investigator in his solitary confinement.

I don't know what they talked about

but afterwards Zavadsky's memory came back.

According to Sobolev,

Zavadsky was persuaded to perjure himself

in exchange for seeing his son walk free.

It was a matter of determining the fate

of Nikolai Zavadsky's 25 year old son,

who had also been charged in connection with the thefts.

And this was the only thing that Nikolai cared about.

He would have signed anything you dictated to him.

After Sobolev's release,

Nikolai Zavadsky Sr. remained the only suspect identified

and prosecuted by investigators.

His trial in a St. Petersburg district court began

on the 21st of January, 2007.

Nikolai Jr. also appeared as a witness.

His father now admitted selling 77 items from the Hermitage.

He insisted he and his wife had done so

to pay for the insulin she needed to treat her diabetes.

But was this just part of a cover story

cooked up for him by police?

Many in the museum were still skeptical

about the official version of events.

Why, for starters,

did the Zavadskys sell through pawn shops?

Most of the 31 returned items could be traced back

to Lombards in the city.

But as Alexander Prokhorov revealed,

they wouldn't have gotten anywhere near

the full market value,

so why not sell to specialist antique dealers instead?

The story of pawn shops and the amount of money

which she received is really strange

because, well, she knew all the big antique dealers

and she knew the right prices of the things.

Also this receipts from the pawn shops show

very small amounts of money which is another mystery.

Even if the couple hadn't gotten the full value

estimated at around $5 million in total,

they would still have walked away

with a significant amount of money.

But a tour of the family apartment

only adds to the mystery.

There is absolutely no sign of affluence.

Here's the kitchen.

There are two fridges.

This is our fridge and washing machine.

This is our neighbor's fridge and washing machine.

That's our table.

It is a communal apartment.

The bathroom and kitchen are shared with another family.

The Zavadskys had two rooms to themselves.

A bedroom.

This is where my wife and I live

but it used to be my parents' room.

And a sitting room.

Here's the room where my father lives now

and where we used to live some time ago.

Here are our books, not all of them though.

I didn't see at all

that my parents had any more money than usual

and there was no golden stream turning towards us.

Of course we weren't really poor, we didn't beg,

but we weren't living in luxury.

The Zavadskys' lifestyle clashes

with the idea that they were criminal masterminds

pulling off a multi-million dollar heist.

Their museum colleagues have concluded

that they couldn't have acted alone.

Could Larisa and her husband have been bribed

or blackmailed by a third party?

The real architect of the crime?

If so, who was it and how did they hope to gain

from the thefts?

A number of theories have emerged.

Top of the list in many minds were the criminal gangs

that have flourished in post-Soviet Russia.

(Alexander speaking in foreign language)

After the well-known events in Russia,

we had a dramatic growth in crime.

There were lots of criminal groups

and they tried to carve up

everything they could lay their hands on,

including things they shouldn't have.

Some of these groups were also involved

in the theft of antiques.

I think that maybe it happened that she was used

as an instrument and she was used, that maybe any aggression

from criminal, of course it may be

since that we are not free from the world of course, yes,

but I not believe that she may be leader

as a criminal leader, not believe.

Larisa Zavadsky's death at work

also came under the spotlight.

As she had diabetes and heart problems,

at the time it was assumed she had died of natural causes.

But had she?

There were some who began to suspect

that she might have been murdered to cover up the identity

of the real criminals.

(Nikolai speaking in foreign language)

I can't be sure but it's very possible

that she was killed as a witness they'd rather do without.

Certainly some of the television channels propose

that maybe she did, somebody helped her to die.

I don't think so because if there was a conspiracy,

the certain way her death somehow stopped everything.

Piotrovsky felt the answer might lie elsewhere.

From an early stage, he had believed

that shadowy forces within the Russian establishment

were behind the thefts.

Initially it had been the speed and pure theater

of the returns of some of the stolen items

that rang warning bells for the Hermitage director.

So I knew that, well, some objects will come back

but I never expected they'll come back so quickly

in such a strange way.

Also from what I know now,

quite a lot of antique dealers knew

that the things do come from Hermitage.

But if antique dealers had discovered

that the Hermitage was being systematically robbed,

why had they kept quiet?

Piotrovsky suspects someone was plotting

to blow the whistle, expose the thefts,

and create a massive scandal for the museum.

I think that we managed to announce this

approximately one month or two months

before it was planned to be announced by other people.

He was also troubled by another key question.

How could one of his own trusted curators have had

the steely nerves required to walk time and again

past the guards,

knowing she had Hermitage treasures in her bag?

Perhaps she felt she had the protection

or approval of someone in authority.

I can't understand how she managed

to take out all this 200 pieces.

Any moment you can be stopped and asked.

It's also very difficult psychological

until you have some guarantee from somebody

that it will go well.

For Piotrovsky,

all the evidence was pointing once again

towards Larisa being a pawn in a much larger conspiracy.

I think that maybe Larisa began to steal

but somehow somebody understood

and knew that she was stealing and selling.

Maybe somebody persuaded her to feel secure

or to go on and to make a real theft of big things

which must be discovered rather soon.

You know, you can't think that it'll never be discovered.

So I think that somebody persuaded her

to take these things out of the museum

to use it to some other purposes,

not just stealing and selling.

If the thefts were ordered,

was someone hoping to exploit the ensuing scandal

to topple the museum director?

Piotrovsky certainly felt a vicious press campaign

against him had been carefully planned and paid for.

But who would want him out and why?

Quite a lot of people in the history of Russia

and Soviet Union who have been dreaming of getting somehow

into the cellars of Hermitage and other museums,

into the storages of the museums,

so how to put the hand of them for different purposes.

The museum director is reluctant

to be drawn into who these shadowy conspirators could be

but speculation has ranged from senior museum staff

to local politicians

and even to government officials in Moscow.

If Piotrovsky was ousted

and replaced by a corrupt director,

perhaps the floodgates would open

on a wholesale plunder of Hermitage treasures.

You know, they say a rumor about the corruptions

in the Russian government, Russian Cultural Institution,

for me is much more rumor.

Mikhail Shvydkoi is no stranger

to accusations of corruption himself.

In 2005, the present Minister of Culture criticized

the corruption rampant in his ministry

in the time of his predecessor.

His predecessor was Mikhail Shvydkoi.

Just was a quite big scandal

because my lawyers opens a criminal case

against the Ministry of Culture.

In the results of this investigations,

the Minister of Culture must said that he was mistake.

Shvydkoi survived his scandal.

Now he was the man with the right

to sack the Hermitage director over the thefts.

Would he allow Piotrovsky to come through unscathed?

Of course this was a very strong shock

for Mr. Piotrovsky and for his reputation too.

Mr. Piotrovsky is high quality professional.

This was my idea and my proposal, he must keep his position

because this kind of cases maybe exist everywhere,

any times.

Piotrovsky survived the campaign

to force him out of office

but his museum and its curators

are now under close scrutiny.

In the wake of the thefts,

President Putin created a commission

to investigate storage and security in all

of the nation's museums.

The team sent to the Hermitage are already warning

that other curators might face investigation

by the police.

(man speaking in foreign language)

You and I know

that it's not only the Zavadsky collection

that suffered from the thefts

but the collections of other Hermitage curators.

And all these circumstances will be revealed

as a result of further investigations by the police.

In an effort to protect the Hermitage

from similar thefts in the future,

the government has now agreed to speed up funding

to extend a modern storage facility,

open three years ago on the outskirts of St. Petersburg.

(dramatic music)

On the 15th of March 2007,

Nikolai Zavadsky Sr. was sentenced to five years in prison

and ordered to pay damages of around $300,000.

The case appeared to be over

but the police investigation has raised as many questions

as it has answered.

Was Zavadsky pressured into a confession

as his son still maintains?

Why was Nikolai Jr. released

if police felt he was also involved?

How did Maxim Shepel receive the horrific injury

to his eye while in custody?

Did the Zavadskys mastermind the thefts themselves

or did they fall victim to corrupt forces

beyond their control?

Piotrovsky continues to believe

that the scandal was manufactured to damage his reputation

and the museum.

Meanwhile, 195 out of the 226 stolen items

are still missing.

Will they ever be found?

(dramatic jazz music)