[MSN] Breguet watch from Hermitage collection found in Moscow

[Museum Security Network Mailinglist]

Breguet watch from Hermitage collection found in Moscow

MOSCOW, October 10 (RIA Novosti) - The latest in a series of items stolen from Russia's Hermitage Museum has been recovered in Moscow - a two-hundred-year-old gold watch made by the famous Swiss watchmaker Abraham-Louis Breguet, a culture preservation watchdog said Tuesday.

The Hermitage, a palace in St. Petersburg built by Catherine II and now used as an art museum, announced at the end of July that 221 items, including icons, medieval and 19th-century jewelry, and silverware and enamels, had been stolen from its Russian section. The $4.85 million theft was uncovered during a routine check.

The Breguet watch was included in an additional list of stolen items subsequently published by the museum.

"A Moscow collector approached our agency [the federal culture preservation agency] some time ago and asked to authenticate a watch he purchased in November 2005 to check if it matches the Breguet watch on the Hermitage stolen items list," Anatoly Vilkov, deputy head of the agency said.

"We examined the watch, and established that it is identical to the item stolen from the Hermitage Museum," he said.

Three people have been charged so far in the Hermitage theft scandal, including the husband and son of an employee of the museum who died last year.

The Russian Prosecutor General's Office has recently extended the deadline for an investigation into the theft of exhibits from the museum until December 31, 2006.

http://en.rian.ru