George Osborne says British Museum ‘victim of inside job’ as ‘steps taken to conceal’ thefts
Around 2,000 items - including gold jewellery, semi-precious stones and glass - were stolen from the British Museum
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The British Museum was the victim of “an inside job”, said its chairman George Osborne, who revealed “steps were taken to conceal” the thefts which happened over two decades.
Mr Osborne was speaking at a session of the Culture, Media and Sport Committee on Wednesday morning after around 2,000 items - including gold jewellery, semi-precious stones and glass - were stolen from the museum over between 20 and 25 years.
The theft came to light when a reptuable antiquarian dealer purchased around 70 of the objects online and then became suspicious, contacting the British Museum with concerns they were stolen in 2021 - but he was assured they weren’t, said Mr Osborne.
However, the undeterred dealer raised the issue again last year, and the theft was finally exposed.
Mr Osborne said: “We were the victims of an inside job by someone, we believe, who over a long period of time was stealing from the museum and the museum put trust in.
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“There are lots of lessons to be learnt as a result of that, the member of staff has been dismissed by us. The objects have started to be recovered… We have changed our whistleblowing code, changed our policy on thefts… tightened up security on thefts.”
The theft of the items - which include gold jewellery and gems of semi-precious stones, and glass dating from the 15th century BC to the 19th century AD - is being investigating by the Metropolitan Police. The force has interviewed a man under caution, but so far made no arrests.
Legal action is also being taken by the museum against a staff member who has been dismissed, while a major review is being carried out. Among the questions being asked are how the items were stolen and why the museum failed to act when first alerted.
Mr Osborne, who started the hour-long session by apologising on behalf of the trustees for the incident, said: “If someone is entrusted by an organisation to look after something and they are the person removing those objects, that is hard for any organisation, and it was hard for the museum, where there is a trusting culture.”
He added: “If that trust is completely abused and as I think will become clear in the coming months quite a lot of steps were taken to conceal that, it wasn’t just that things were taken, records were altered and the like, it’s hard to spot.”
He said the failure to act on information from the dealer over the stolen items was a critical issue which needed to be learned from, pointing toward the change in the museum’s policy on whistleblowers.
He said: “The big question for the museum is why, even though these thefts may have taken place over 20 to 25 years period, in 2021 [when] the museum receives an email from a reputable antiquarian dealer who says ‘things are being stolen, they are for sale, I think I’ve bought them’, and by the way identifies an individual he thinks is responsible... why the museum didn’t do better in using that piece of information.”
Interim director of the museum, Sir Mark Jones, told the panel that some 350 of the estimated missing items were in the process of being returned, and all will go on display at the museum.
He said that the objects arrived at the museum as part of a large gift, with some of them purchased. He said that most of them had not been registered due to the initially-thought low value of the collection.
He said: “The big problem here is that they weren’t properly documented, they weren’t properly published and so it was possible for someone to take objects from that collection without being found out.”
Mr Jones added that rules over the access to “strong rooms” holding items at the museum had been changed, with no-one now allowed to enter one of the vaults on their own.
A multi-million project is also taking place to register about a million objects currently unregistered, as well as digitalising and taking pictures of many more of the items under the insitution’s care.
Despite the high-profile theft, Mr Jones claimed the museum’s reputation had remained “pretty strong”, and that no donors have so far pulled their support from the institution.