Police arrested two men accused of stealing more than 220 pieces of jewelry, silverware and other items worth a combined $5 million from Russia's famed State Hermitage Museum, news reports said Saturday.
The suspects may be able to help authorities find about 70 of the stolen pieces, the Interfax and ITAR-Tass news agencies reported, citing unidentified police sources.
An antique dealer had discovered that a decorated 19th-century chalice in his possession was among the items stolen from the St. Petersburg museum, and returned it to authorities Friday.
Boris Boyarskov, the head of the Culture Ministry's department in charge of protection of cultural values, said on NTV television that the dealer gave investigators information that led to the arrests.
The theft, which highlighted the poor security at Russian cultural institutions, was discovered after a routine inventory check that began in October and was completed at the end of July.
Rossiya and NTV television stations reported that one suspect was married to the curator in charge of the collection where the theft occurred. She died suddenly at her workplace when the inventory check began in October.
Interfax reported that the suspects had confessed to the thefts, which they said took place over the past six years.
Hermitage director Mikhail Piotrovsky, who has blamed the thefts on museum workers, refused to comment to Ekho Moskvy radio Saturday on the reports about the arrests.
The Hermitage, housed in the Russian czars' ornate Winter Palace along the Neva River, was founded by Catherine the Great in 1764. Its vast holdings of antiquities, decorative art and Western art include world-renowned collections of Italian Renaissance, 17th- and 18th-century Dutch and Flemish, and impressionist paintings.