Precious silver and enamelware at St Petersburg's Hermitage Museum worth nearly £2.7m has disappeared and probably been stolen with the connivance of staff, its director confirmed yesterday.

Some 221 icons, religious objects and pieces of jewellery studded with precious stones were found missing after a stocktake was completed at the end of last month. "There is no doubt this could not have happened without the participation of museum staff," the director, Mikhail Piotrovsky, said yesterday at the museum, once home to Russia's tsars. "It is a stab in the back of the Hermitage, a stab in the back of all museums."

Mr Piotrovsky said the items had not been insured because they were in storage; only exhibited artworks at the Hermitage are insured.

Prosecutors have opened a criminal case but police say there remains a possibility the items, dating from the 15th to 18th centuries, had gone missing internally as a result of the museum's chaotic catologuing, and might yet be recovered.

The Hermitage has about 3m items in its collection; more than 90% are in storage at any one time. Its corridors, storerooms and exhibition halls form a giant labyrinth, which stretches along the banks of the river Neva in the heart of the former imperial capital.

The curator in charge of most of the collection where the theft occurred died suddenly at her workplace when the inventory check began in October. The museum did not identify her or say how she died.

"Only three people could get in there, Mr Piotrovsky said. "And many things were looked after by a guard who is no longer among the living." But the works of art had most likely been stolen over a period of several years, he added.

The head of Rosonkhrankultura, the federal cultural heritage agency, aid the theft was part of a larger trend of poor security and unscrupulous workers. Boris Boryaskov also chided Hermitage directors for not using modern technology to monitor the inventory. "What happened at the Hermitage for us was not unexpected," he said.

Guardian Unlimited

Back 02.08.2006.