MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 18th September, 2019) The cost of sixteen historical documents that will be handed over to the Russian authorities by the US side on Wednesday exceeds $30,000, US Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) Regional Attache Katie Bay told RIA Novosti.
Earlier, the US Embassy in Moscow reported that the United States would pass to Russia documents from the era of Nicholas II � the so-called imperial decrees to the Order Chapter � stolen in the 1990s from Russia. The ceremonial return of artifacts will be held at the residence of the US ambassador in Moscow and will be one of the last public events of John Huntsman, who will resign as the head of the diplomatic mission on October 3.
"These archives I know were sold to the auction house in California for $13,000. But when we got them appraised by professional appraisers, they appraised them at around $31,000-32,000," Bay said.
The documents were stolen by Vladimir Feinberg, some of them were transported to Germany and then part of them made it to the United States.
"They are decrees that were issued by Tsar Nicholas II. They were signed between 1905 and 1914, and they are all in Russian so I can't read any of what is written. But I know that they were housed at the Federal Archives in St. Petersburg where they were stolen, and then they ended up in the United States at an auction house," Bay said.
At the same time, she emphasized that experts estimate the total value of archive documents stolen by Feinberg at $24 million.
This is not the first ceremony of transferring historical documents to Russia by the US Embassy. For example, in 2016, under previous ambassador John Tefft, the US side returned 28 documents. In 2013, some artifacts were returned by then-ambassador Michael McFaul.
