British Museum recovering stolen treasures as director resigns

London’s British Museum has recovered some of the 2,000 treasures stolen from its storerooms after a bungled internal probe that led to the resignation of its embattled director.

“We have already started to recover some of the stolen items,” said the museum’s chairman George Osborne in an interview with the BBC Saturday.

“We believe we have been the victim of thefts over a long period of time and frankly more could have been done to prevent them,” Osborne said, alluding to an investigation launched in 2021 by Hartwig Fischer, the director of the museum for the last eight years.

Fischer, who was slated to resign next year, abruptly left his position at the storied museum on Friday, days after a museum employee was fired under suspicion of looting its storerooms, the BBC reported.

“Over the last few days I have been reviewing in detail the events around the thefts from the British Museum and the investigation into them,” Fischer said in his resignation statement. “It is evident that the British Museum did not respond as comprehensively as it should have in response to the warnings in 2021, and to the problem that has now fully emerged. The responsibility for that failure must ultimately rest with the director.”  

Fischer was first non-British director of the museum which opened in 1759.

The stolen items included pieces of gold jewelry and semi-precious stones dating from the 15th century B.C.E. to the 19th century.

A senior curator was blamed for the theft. A man has been interviewed by London’s Metropolitan Police but no arrests have been made.

Some of the treasures were discovered when a Dutch antiquities dealer alerted the museum after spotting objects from its collection for sale on eBay.

Some of the stolen items, valued at more than $62,000 were being sold on the resale platform for as little as $50, according to the museum.

Osborne said that the board of trustees has actively started looking for a new permanent director. Meanwhile, deputy director Jonathan Williams will lead the museum on an interim basis until a new director is found, Osborne said.