A ceremony at which illegally exported cultural artifacts were handed back to the Bulgarian state by the US authorities was held in the Bulgarian Embassy in Washington, the embassy's Facebook page informed. These are about 3,000 items, as most of them are Roman coins. They were seized by the US border authorities, who stopped an attempt for smuggling the artifacts into US territory.

Ambassador Georgi Panayotov welcomed the return and pointed out the successful cooperation between the law enforcement authorities of Bulgaria and the USA, both in this case and in many others. He thanked the representatives of the US Department of Homeland Security and Department of State for their efforts in the fight against trafficking of cultural assets. This type of crime leads to cultural, scientific and historical impoverishment of countries directly affected by it.

Translation: Al. Markov