Police officers have found a secret basement with five tons of amber in the Kaliningrad Region.

      The hiding place was found in the course of a search in an amber processing plant in the Yantarny Settlement. It had its cellar entrance immured. 227 bags with amber were stored there under a layer of cement lining. According to preliminary estimates, the find is more than a billion rubles worth. At the same time, as the Ministry of Internal Affairs informs, the bags harboured lots of rare pieces, each of them weighing over one and a half kg; each of them can priced up to $100 thousand.

      The search in the amber plant was carried out within the legal investigation of attempt at fraud with compensation of a value added tax to the amount of 250 million rubles. The person involved in the case is the former owner of the Specialist JSC Victor Bogdan.  He and some other suspects are on the international wanted list.

      About 90 percent of world reserves of amber are concentrated in the Kaliningrad Region. The world’s only industrial enterprise for amber extraction is located in the Yantarny Settlement.