As the saying goes, "chaotic gold, prosperous antiques", gold has a price, antiques are priceless, with the development of the economy, antiques gradually appear on the market, because of the collection value, some antiques have been speculated out of a sky-high price, it is precisely because of this extremely high profit, attracting a large number of people crazy digging graves.
China has also begun to pay attention to the protection of cultural relics, now the two places with the most cultural relics are museums and underground, the cultural relics of the museum belong to the national property, with strict protection measures, it is impossible to steal, but such a huge profit, will there be "self-theft"? The human heart is greedy, and one expert did just that.
Li Haitao is a graduate student of the History Department of Fudan University, good academic qualifications coupled with the spiritual outlook of the instrument hall, so that the People of the Chengde Cultural Relics Administration Bureau are very satisfied, he was arranged to be a cultural relics administrator, for outsiders, cultural relics management is a boring job, but Li Haitao is not only not bored, but also has a strong interest.
In addition to eating and resting, Li Haitao spent almost all his time studying cultural relics and the study of Tibetan Buddhism, and his academic qualifications and performance were soon noticed, and in 1991, Li Haitao was transferred to the deputy director of the Cultural Protection Information Office, which gave him further contact with important information.
In 1992, Li Haitao and the curator went to the auction house to buy some lost cultural relics, and when the sky-high prices were auctioned one by one, Li Haitao was shocked, and he couldn't help but blurt out: "The original cultural relics are so valuable!" The curator did not realize the meaning of this sentence, so he casually echoed it.
Since he went back, Li Haitao looked at the cultural relics before, his vision began to change, just as the so-called greed breeds crimes, Li Haitao could not withstand the temptation and began to "guard and steal", he was originally the deputy director of the data room, he could access some high-level materials, he "transferred" cultural relics by altering the data.
Some handicrafts, cultural relics fragments, parts, attachments, non-museum collections of cultural relics or low-grade collections of cultural relics have been replaced by him with forged cultural relics, many times to change the cultural relics archives, since 1992, Li Haitao stole 259 cultural relics, sold 152 cultural relics, profit more than 200 million yuan.
In 2002, an auction venue auctioned two items stolen by Li Haitao of the Qingqianlong Color Depiction of the Golden Immeasurable Life Buddha and the Qianlong Period Silver Temple City, and some discerning experts recognized these two pieces as the collection of the Forbidden City, and they were also precious cultural relics in the national grade collection.
After investigation, these two items belong to the Eight Temples outside Chengde, if it were not for Li Haitao's greed, trying to sell these two cultural relics is a collection of precious cultural relics, it is very likely that Li Haitao will also use the same means to steal museum cultural relics, but Li Haitao is only an expert in studying cultural relics, and there is not much way.
Obviously, Li Haitao is in an intricate smuggling chain, and Li Haitao's arrest only reveals the "tip of the iceberg".