The press office of the Interior Ministry has announced that Bulgarian authorities have terminated the activity of an organized criminal group involved in illegal excavations and trade of cultural-historic valuables and foiled the illegal export of a group of looted archaeological finds to foreign no-questions-asked markets. The operation was carried out by officers of the Cultural Valuables Traffic Department at the Chief Directorate for Fight against Organized Crime, in cooperation with the territorial units in the cities of Pleven, Vratsa and Montana who had been watching the group for four months.
The gang was carrying out illegal excavation work on the Ulpia Oescus site (photo), located close to the village of Gigen, district of Pleven. Five members of the group have been detained. The authorities seized around 200 different ancient Roman coins, metal and stone figurines, gilt ("golden") harness appliqués and plaques. A two-metre stone ("marble") statue was also seized, which the criminals peddling it apparently valued at "more than EUR 1 million". It was initially thought to have represented Aphrodite (conceivably what it was being marketed as) but archaeologist Petar Banov from the Regional History Museum in Pleven identified it as a tomb sculpture of an unknown woman. The statue had been hidden by being buried in the yard of a house in the village of Gigen, police believe it had probably been dug out in 2006 or 2007 and had been hidden as the dealers awaited clients willing to buy it.
Sources:
'Criminal group dealing with illegal archaeological excavation works trade of
cultural-historic valuables busted in Bulgaria', Focus News, 29th October
'Bulgarian Police Seize Aphrodite Statue from Archaeology Criminals', www.novinite.com October 29, 2010.
'Bulgarian Expert: Seized Statue Is Not Aphrodite www.novinite.com October 31, 2010.
[The Wikipedia page on the site is pretty pathetic (the German one alone contains more information). There are some photos of the site here. The Roman bridge mentioned by the newspaper reports was a bit further along the river].
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