Novaya Gazeta confirmed the detention of Gozman’s wife Marina Egorova. She was accused of taking the family silverware abroad

Novaya Gazeta confirmed the detention of Leonid Gozman’s wife, Marina Egorova, a professor at the Faculty of Psychology at Moscow State University, which was reported earlier today by the propaganda TV channel RT. According to the newspaper, the 72-year-old woman was placed under house arrest on October 4 on charges of “smuggling cultural property as part of an organized crime group.” She returned to Russia because of her work at the university.

As Novaya writes, by the “organized group” that allegedly smuggled valuables, the investigation means Egorova, Gozman and the driver who took the woman to the border checkpoint when she was going abroad to visit her husband. The exported “valuables” are designated in the indictment as “kitchen and household utensils.” The newspaper writes that we are talking about several silver devices that are of value only for the Gozman family, since they were inherited.

On October 6, that is, after Egorova’s arrest, the following message appeared on Gozman’s Facebook page: “Due to a number of personal circumstances, the details of which I would not like to go into now, I am reducing my socio-political and media activity.”

The RT report said that Egorova allegedly took “many valuable items and antiques” from Russia to Italy.

In a comment to The Insider, Gozman confirmed the information about Yegorova’s detention and stated that “unfortunately, an offense took place.”

“Last summer, Marina, while in Moscow, at my request, handed over a set of silver and cupronickel kitchen utensils that previously belonged to my late parents, and before them to my grandparents, to transfer these things in accordance with the last will of my parents to Germany to our daughter — her parents wanted her to have all this. The carrier was detained at the border, his things were confiscated, and he was allowed to continue on his way.”

Gozman admitted that formally he and his wife violated Russian law by not sending the cutlery before exporting it abroad for examination to the Ministry of Culture, but expressed confidence that they did not have any cultural value and added that they were not intended for sale. “As far as I know, my wife has no complaints against the investigation and the employees of the Federal Penitentiary Service - everything is carried out according to the law and as correctly as possible. <...> We hope for justice and humanity,” Gozman concluded. He published identical text on his Facebook page.

Russian public and political figure Leonid Gozman left the country after the outbreak of a full-scale war in Ukraine. He was declared a “foreign agent”, and in July he was sentenced in absentia to 8.5 years in prison under the article on disseminating “fakes” about the army.