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Russia fighting against contraband of cultural treasures in good faith — mission to UNESCO

The Russian Federal Customs Service said earlier that Sakhalin customs officers had thwarted an unlawful attempt to export an 11,000-year-old mammoth, a cave bear and wooly rhinoceros bones from Yakutia to the Netherlands

PARIS, November 25. /TASS/. Russia is fighting against the illegal trafficking of cultural valuables in good faith, the Russia mission to UNESCO said on Friday.

"Russia conscientiously implements the 1970 UNESCO Convention (on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property -TASS) and is fighting against the illegal trafficking of cultural valuables," it wrote on its Twitter account. "They include fossilized bones, which Sakhalin customs officers prevented from being illegally exported from Russia to the Netherlands."

The Russian Federal Customs Service said earlier that Sakhalin customs officers had thwarted an unlawful attempt to export an 11,000-year-old mammoth, a cave bear and wooly rhinoceros bones from Yakutia to the Netherlands. According to customs officers in the city of Magadan, a businessman specializing in extracting and selling paleontological finds in Yakutia was planning to illegally send parcels with the contraband to a European buyer. The parcel was to reach the buyer via Moscow but the entrepreneur was detained at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport. The man is now faces a prison term of up to seven years and a fine of up to one million rubles (16,460 US dollars).

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