London: Thanasis Gavos

Greek gold jewelery is among the antiquities missing from the British Museum, claimed art dealer Itai Gradel, who first noticed the thefts at the London institution and informed his address.

Meanwhile, the chairman of his administration commissioners George Osborne British Museum confirmed that around 2,000 items are believed to have been stolen from the institution, although some have begun to be recovered.

Briton Mr Gradel, who specializes in Roman jewelery and spotted loot from the British Museum being sold on eBay, told the Guardian: “They also discovered (at the British Museum) Greek gold jewelery which was missing or damaged, had been cut into pieces with scissors or pliers or they had been broken up with a hammer or the gold had been removed. These are lost forever.”

He also said he had been informed that museum staff had discovered that almost an entire collection of 942 gems that had not been cataloged in detail was missing. “If they can’t identify them, then how can they be returned to the museum?” asked the Danish expert in Roman antiquities.

The Greek expert in the identification of stolen antiquities Christos Tsirogiannis, holder of a relevant seat of Unesco at the Ionian University, said he suspects that the British Museum has not determined the quantity of the stolen items and what they are either because it has incomplete data or because it had never recorded some of them.

“This eliminates the possibility that they will be recognized and their return claimed,” added Mr. Tsirogiannis.

As pointed out by the Guardian, to which experts spoke, the British Museum’s public database records 4.5 of the at least 8 million objects it has in its rooms and warehouses.

In an interview on Saturday morning on his radio BBCmoreover, George Osborne apologized for the situation.

He said it was believed the thefts had been going on for a long time and that more could be done to prevent them.

He admitted that there is no complete record of the objects held by the British Museum, noting that a new one without storage is being planned. Until then, however, he acknowledged that “someone with knowledge has an advantage if they want to get some of these items.”

He dismissed accusations of a cover-up by the museum’s management, attributing the inadequate investigation into Itai Gradel’s allegations to a possible collective refusal by the institution’s leadership to believe that an insider could actually be stealing artifacts.

Regarding the recovery of objects, he said that there is an active cooperation of people from the field of antiquities with the museum. He noted that thorough work is being done in cooperation with the police to identify the stolen items.

THE Metropolitan Police has questioned a suspect, believed to be Peter Higgs, the former curator of Greek collections at the British Museum, who was fired.

Mr. Gradel, moreover, accepted the apology of the resigned director of the British Museum, Hartwich Fisher. In his resignation letter on Friday, Mr. Fischer admitted that his criticism of Mr. Gradel was a misjudgment because when he informed the museum of the thefts, he did not disclose the full extent of the thefts. His statement had been criticized as an attempt to disclaim responsibility.

As it became known late on Friday, the deputy director of the British Museum Jonathan Williams has voluntarily agreed to withdraw from his regular duties until an independent investigation into the thefts is completed.

Mr Gradel said the blame lay more with Mr Williams than Mr Fisher, as the former was the initial recipient of information about the thefts but reacted with “incompetence on an incredible scale”.