Czech national collection of diamonds exposed as fakes
Diamonds and other precious stones forming part of a Czech National Museum collection thought to be worth millions of pounds have been exposed as fakes during a routine audit.
The inspection of supposed 5-carat diamonds and a 19-carat sapphires has left curators scratching their heads as to how the real things went missing over the last 50 years.
Around half the museum’s collection, acquired by the museum during communist times, has already been found to be fake.
The museum is now trying to discover if it was victim of con artists during the acquisitions, or even if the apparent heist was an inside job sometime in the last five decades.
The collection was located at different sites over the years, but since 2011 has sat in a secure depository on the outskirts of Prague, Mr Macek told The Telegraph.
One sapphire that cost CZK200,000 (£7,070 at current rates) in the 1970s, and would be worth tens of millions today, said Ivo Macek, director of the Museum of Natural History, which houses the collection.
“A diamond was confiscated by the government in the 1950s, and handed to the National Museum in the 1960s” he explained. “The sapphire was bought from a Prague antique shop in 1978.”
Just 400 of the museum’s 5,000 precious stones and minerals have been audited thus far, but all the most valuable have been checked. The full audit will take until 2020.
The scandal comes as the National Museum’s main building, which sits at the top of Wenceslas Square - one of Prague’s main tourist thoroughfares and host to the massive demonstrations that brought down the communist regime in 1989 - prepares to reopen in September after seven years of reconstruction.
The reopening is timed to mark the 100th anniversary of the formation of Czechoslovakia, which secured independence from the Austro-Hungarian empire at the end of World War I. The Czech Republic was formed during the Velvet Divorce from Slovakia in 1993.
“When you have a collection of 20 million artefacts, and then a certain fraction of that may prove to be problematic,” Michal Stehlik, the National Museum’s deputy director told Radio Prague.
He’s hoping to find a silver lining, suggesting the museum could put on an exhibition of fake artifacts from across the world.
Security at Czech museums has come under serious question in recent years. A fraudster on the run from prison spent several years serving as the chief economist at the Museum of Agriculture. When discovered in 2014, he was revealed to have stolen close to CZK10 million (£350,400).
However, security at the National Museum has now been tightened, Mr Macek says. The gemstone collection has been sealed, and only he and one other official have access, Mr Macek added.
“The National Museum is insured of course, but these problems are most probably 40–50 years old. However, we’re cooperating with the police to do all that we can.”
