The Moscow City Court returned to the owner the paintings of Nicholas Roerich seized in favor of the state

The Moscow City Court granted the complaint of the International Center of the Roerichs and returned 272 paintings of Nicholas Roerich and his sons Svyatoslav and Yuri, previously seized in favor of the state at the request of the prosecutor's office. This was reported in court.

"The court decision has been completely canceled," RIA Novosti quoted a court representative as saying.

As reported by EADaily, in July last year, by the decision of the Ostankino District Court of Moscow, the paintings of Roerich and sons, which are in storage in The State Museum of Art of the Peoples of the East, were recognized as ownerless property and transferred to the ownership of the state.

The International Public Organization "International Center of the Roerichs" disagreed with the court's decision, the appeal filed stated that it was the Center that owned the paintings, but was not involved in the case in the court of first instance.

In March 2017, searches were conducted in the premises of the center in Moscow in the case of Boris Bulochnik, ex-chairman of the board of Master Bank, accused of fraud. The baker financed the activities of the ICR. According to investigators, he purchased part of the paintings for the center with the money of the bank's depositors. Back in 2018, the paintings were arrested. In total, several hundred paintings and drawings donated by Svyatoslav Roerich, several thousand personal belongings and archival documents of the Roerich family, as well as paintings donated to him by various private donors since the late 1990s and mid-2000s were seized from the center.

In January last year, the Baker was sentenced to 10 years in prison.