On Dec. 7, the Westfries Museum in Hoorn, the Netherlands accused a Defense Ministry battalion that formerly was the OUN volunteer unit, top officials of the nationalist Svoboda Party and former Security Service chief Ukraine Valentyn Nalyvaychenko of blackmail. The allegations – dismissed as nonsense by the accused – is that they conspired to extort €5 million to return stolen art work that was said to have been recovered in the war zone in eastern Ukraine, otherwise they would sell the works on the black market.
In a joint news release by the city of Hoorn and the Westfries Museum, the Dutch accused members of the OUN Battalion of possessing a collection of 17th-18th-century artwork stolen from the museum 10 years ago.
“Ukraine: give back the stolen art,” the museum’s director Ad Geerdinksaid ina video statement posted on video sharing site YouTube.
The Dutch said all their accusations were based on the results of a private investigation by Dutch art detective Arthur Brand, who was hired by the museum to track down the works.
But after 20 days of investigation led by Ukrainian and Dutch law enforcement agencies, the museum changed its position and stopped commenting publicly.
Geerdink is no longer linking Tyahnybok and Nalyvaychenko to the case, and now said that the Dutch have only seen strong proof that one stolen painting, Henrik Bogaert’s “Farmer’s Wedding,” is in Ukraine.
But Geerdink told the Deutsche Welle news agency that “all 24 paintings, as well as 70 pieces of silverware, are still together. So we believe that (they are all in Ukraine).”
In Ukraine, Interior Minister Arsen Avakov and Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin said on Dec. 10 and Dec. 12, respectively, that an investigation is under way. But Geerdink said he has not been contacted and little progress has been reported.
Nalyvaychenko told the Kyiv Post on Dec. 23 that he hasn’t been called into the Ukrainian Interior Ministry for questioning in relation to the case.
“As I said earlier, I contacted Interpol and asked them to start an investigation. And they thanked me for that,” Nalyvaychenko said.
On Dec. 7, during the phone conversation to the Kyiv Post, Brand said he was confident about his investigation, saying that two men from the OUN Battalion came to Dutch Embassy in Kyiv saying the collection had been found in a villa in eastern Ukraine. But now Brand doesn’t even talk to the press anymore.
“At first, the soldiers wanted to give the artworks back as a gesture of goodwill. But during the negotiations it became clear that the soldiers wanted a reward,” Brand said on Dec. 7.
He described the soldiers as tools in the hands of powerful corrupt officials in the Security Service, and of Tyahnybok. Brand said he was confident that all 24 paintings are in Ukraine because a photo of on painting was sent to him by OUN soldiers Borys Humenyuk. Brand said that according to his “very reliable but anonymous sources in the authorities, it was Tyahnybok who was trying to sell the paintings. Nalyvaychenko’s name had also been mentioned twice, Brand said. However, it was Nalyvaychenko’s SBU workers, not the former security service head himself, who were involved in the attempt to ransom the artwork,” Brand said.
The SBU has denied Brand’s latest claims, and the investigation continues.
Meanwhile, the Dutch museum looks to be no closer to recovering its stolen property than it was when the scandal in Ukraine first broke. At least the Dutch prevented their sale so far on the black market, their stated goal for holding the attention-grabbing Dec. 7 news release.
