Ukraine expects an official request from the
Dutch prosecution agencies on looking into the circumstances in which a
collection of paintings disappeared from a Dutch museum and will welcome a
visit of investigators from the Netherlands to address the matter, Ukrainian
National Police chief Khatia Dekanoidze said.
"As the chief of the Ukrainian National
Police, I can assure you that we expect an official inquiry letter from the
Dutch Public Prosecution Service addressed to the Ukrainian Prosecutor
General's Office," Dekanoidze said in a commentary for foreign media in
Kyiv on Thursday.
"I'd like to assure you that we are open
and are expecting investigation officials in Ukraine, who would be able to
examine these materials and [conduct] an inquiry together with our
investigators," she said.
Ukraine is ready to receive a Dutch delegation
and cooperate in probing the incident involving the paintings, Dekanoidze said.
It was reported earlier that Westfries Museum
spokesman Arthur Brand had said that an OUN battalion was in possession of a
collection of 24 paintings stolen from the museum in 2005 and attempted to
charge 50 million euro for it.
Ukrainian Interior Minister Arsen Avakov said
Ukraine is maintaining contact with the Netherlands regarding the stolen
paintings. "A group of people discovered a collection at a country house
outside Donetsk, and it has been identified as one having relation to the
collection that disappeared from the Dutch museum several years ago,"
Avakov said.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko instructed
the Security Service to look into the reports concerning the paintings stolen
from the Netherlands.
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