Deputy head of Russia's Hermitage suspected of embezzlement: Reports

When contacted by AFP on Thursday, the Hermitage declined to comment, saying the situation "was not quite clear yet." Photo: A. Savin / wikipedia.org.

SAINT PETERSBURG (AFP).- The deputy head of Russia's Hermitage museum has been put under house arrest for allegedly embezzling funds allocated for building new facilities, Russian media reported Thursday. Mikhail Novikov, who oversees construction at the world-renowned museum, was Tuesday "placed under house arrest until May 23", Moscow's Lefortovsky court spokeswoman Yekaterina Krasnova told AFP, without specifying the charges against him.

Security service sources cited in Russian media said that Novikov's arrest was tied to the embezzlement of public funds destined for the construction of a building used for storing the museum's artworks. The Hermitage in Saint Petersburg said in a statement Thursday that the FSB security service had searched the offices of its construction department in connection with "a criminal case against a number of people involved in embezzlement during the construction of new buildings and facilities for the museum's needs."

In 2015 the museum signed a contract worth 3.7 billion rubles ($65 million) with a construction company, which received one billion rubles but failed to complete its work on time, Kommersant daily newspaper reported. "What happened is mostly related to the Hermitage's construction sites," museum director Mikhail Piotrovsky told Russian government newspaper Rossiiskaya Gazeta. "Where there are important building projects, there is lots of money, lots of problems and lots of dishonest contractors."

When contacted by AFP on Thursday, the Hermitage declined to comment, saying the situation "was not quite clear yet."

This is not the first time the celebrated museum has been embroiled in scandal. In 2013 authorities carried out raids as part of a probe into the alleged embezzlement of $1.5 million of state funding allocated for refitting the museum. Housed in the vast Winter Palace, once home to Russia's tsars, the Hermitage has a collection of more than three million items, including paintings by Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso.

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