Local officials caught stealing and trying to gift museum paintings to Tyumen's Governor

Officials in Tyumen have been caught trying to steal three paintings from a local museum, in order to gift them to the region's governor.

According to an open letter written by the museum's staff, Yulia Sakaurskaya, the director of the Tyumen oblast's Culture Department, and Natalia Khvostantseva, the director of the museum, entered the building on the evening of September 30, after exhibits were closed to the public. The women reportedly cut from their frames three paintings that had just the day before debuted in a new collection of work by artist Yuri Rybyakov.

When leaving the museum, Sakaurskaya and Khvostantseva were confronted by coworkers, who asked where they were taking the artwork, for which they'd not filed any transfer paperwork. "It's a gift for the Governor of Tyumen," they reportedly answered.

Rybyakov, who created the paintings, called the act "medieval," saying he only loaned the artwork to the museum for a public exhibit. Two of the paintings, he says, have been returned to him, while a third is still missing.

In their open letter to Tymen Governor Vladimir Yakushev (the same man Sakaurskaya and Khvostantseva hoped to impress with the paintings), the museum's employees warned that these women have gifted other stolen artwork to influential people in the past, as well. In 2014, for instance, they allegedly took one painting and three prints from the local Museum of Fine Arts and gifted them to a local branch of the oil company Lukoil.