The court will deliver a verdict against the former director of the museum in Litoměřice

Litoměřice – The Litoměřice District Court will today deliver a verdict against the former director of the Litoměřice museum, Eva Štíbrová, who is charged with breach of duty in the management of someone else's property. Štíbrová faces up to eight years in prison, as around 10,000 items worth almost 16 million crowns have gone missing from the museum's collections. At the end of November, the prosecutor proposed a three-year suspended sentence and an obligation to compensate for the damage. Štíbrová has denied the charges.

Štíbrová served as the director of the museum for 38 years until 2012, when she retired. The new director, Tomáš Wiesner, conducted an extensive inventory of the collections, during which it was discovered that about 10,000 items were missing, many of which have an incalculable historical value according to experts. Among the rarest items is a Latin Gradual from the 15th century, which was later found by chance in the Austrian National Library, and a unique Hussite chalice.

The inventory process took three years, and Wiesner contacted the police regarding the missing items. "Basically, there's a cross-section of everything that is traded. Anything of value has disappeared. It was a fundamental disruption of the entire collection. The items include glass, tin, porcelain, weapons, militaria from World War II, numismatics," Wiesner said earlier. According to the indictment, there were also cases of valuable collection items being exchanged for less valuable ones, dubious write-offs, and losses.

The defense expressed confidence that some items may have been missing from the collections even before Štíbrová took office.