The State Hermitage informs the public as follows:

On 15 March 2007, in the Dzerzhinsky Court of St Petersburg, N. Zavadsky was sentenced in the case of theft of art objects from the Hermitage. The State Hermitage expresses its satisfaction with the way the crime was qualified.

The Court delivered its verdict taking into consideration the materials of the case and current legislation. In connection with the finding of the Court with respect to the State Hermitage, the Hermitage states that the materials of its own investigation and of the work of numerous commissions a broad program of heightened checks on movement of people and exhibit items has been elaborated in the museum. A new system of controls and reporting has been instituted in all storage facilities and technical equipment available for this purpose has been increased. Video monitoring has been introduced within the storage facilities to supplement video monitoring on the outside. Equipment is being set up to x-ray briefcases and pocket books. Checks at all entrances and exits from the museum have been made much more rigorous.

As previously, the State Hermitage believes that the problem can be fully solved only when new storage facilities are constructed where all the aforementioned systems are built in at the planning stage of the project. In this regard, the museum is making it a priority to construct new buildings of the State Hermitage's Storage Facility.

Checks on the presence of exhibit items are made in the State Hermitage following a prearranged schedule. Checks have been completed on the storeroom holdings of Western European painting, sculpture, drawings and most of the decorative and applied art (totaling around 100,000 items).

The Hermitage has performed an analysis of nearly all existing systems for marking exhibit items. Experimental work is being carried out to select the most suitable marking systems. Effective verification of exhibit items became possible thanks to the availability of electronic curatorial data bases. At present it is timely to include all curatorial bases in a general electronic catalogue, a solution that has also been shown to be effective.