Yanukovych’s infamous ‘golden loaf of bread’ is stolen

Ukrainian officials have misplaced several valuables discovered at Viktor Yanukovych’s abandoned presidential palace. Among the missing objects is the deposed leader’s infamous gold paperweight shaped like a loaf of bread, said Dmitry Dobrodomov, secretary of Ukraine’s parliamentary anti-corruption committee.

Dobrodomov says the Attorney General is currently unable to locate the golden loaf. “Effectively, this thing has been stolen. The question is who took it. I have a whole list of items that it turns out were never actually confiscated—they showed them on TV and that was it,” Dobrodomov explained.

“For two months, we’ve been asking if certain items were confiscated and what their current legal status is. For two months, we’ve been getting the runaround. The committee and I are prepared to raise this issue and find out who’s responsible,” Dobrodomov said.

After the overthrow of Viktor Yanukovych on February 22, 2014, his presidential palace at Mezhyhiria was opened to the public. Visitors flooded the compound and photographed the home’s various luxuries and expensive decorations. The most infamous discovery was a 4.4-pound paperweight made of solid gold and shaped like a loaf of bread.

In December 2014, Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk declared that everything found Mezhyhiria was being confiscated by the government.

Yanukovych denies that the gold paperweight belonged to him, saying it was planted in his home to exaggerate his wealth and give his political opponents a symbol of his supposed corruption.