In the Smolensk region, Russian police officers together with the FSB detained a car that was illegally transporting mammoth tusks, the Russian police said.
“Police stopped a truck on the Moscow-Minsk highway. It was traveling from Moscow to the Republic of Belarus. It contained more than 60 bags of mammoth tusks and their fragments which are at least 10 thousand years old. According to preliminary information, paleontological materials were mined in Yakutia. There were no documents from the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation for the export of cultural property, as well as the conclusion of a certified expert of the Ministry of Culture about the belonging of the tusks of mammoth and their fragments to the cultural values,” the Russian police said.
The cargo was seized and sent for paleontological forensic examination. According to the conclusion, 2 mammoth tusks and 3 fragments represent a special cultural value, the approximate cost of which exceeds 650 thousand rubles. With respect to them, the law of the Eurasian Economic Union establishes a permitting procedure for export.
Photo: мвд.рф
“A criminal case has been opened and the preliminary investigation of the criminal case is underway. The organizers of the crime are being established,” said the official representative of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia, Irina Volk..
