Alexander Ivanov (art collector)

[2][3] His most significant purchase was the 1902 Fabergé egg made as an engagement gift to Baron Édouard de Rothschild fiancée.

In the late 1980s, as the Soviet Union began to allow some capitalism, Ivanov was one of the first Russian businessmen to start trading in computers, and he quickly built up a successful and lucrative business.

It also catered to the growing demand for luxury items from the Russian Empire's newly rich as the economy boomed in the two decades before World War I.

In addition to Easter eggs, Fabergé made a wide range of jewelry and decorative artworks, such as figurines of people, animals, vases with flowers, etc.

After 1917 Bolshevik revolutionaries began to sell off Imperial treasures, and Fabergé's artworks became popular with American collectors, such as Lillian Thomas Pratt, Matilda Geddings Gray, Marjorie Merriweather Post, India Early Minshall, Malcolm Forbes, etc.

[2] On 8 December 2014, Russia's President Vladimir Putin gifted the Rothschild Egg to the State Hermitage Museum on occasion of its 250th anniversary.

[8] Actually, British investigators at the behest of UK's HM Revenue and Customs department, claimed that the museum had failed to pay nearly £70,000 in VAT on objects bought over the past 15 years in London auction houses.

The charges originated in February 2012, when the museum's director, Sergei Avtonoshkin, missed a flight to Moscow departing from London, where he had purchased a number of items at Christie's and Bonhams.

When investigators raided the museum, Avtonoshkin told them that the egg had been loaned to Baden-Baden briefly for an exhibition and then sent back to Moscow.

In the Hermitage website Goloshchapov also appears as the donor of another piece by Fabergé, the Alexander III 25th Wedding Anniversary mantel clock, which was also presented by Putin in December 2014.

[18] In January 2021, an art dealer claimed in an open letter[19] to the director of the Hermitage Museum Mikhail Piotrovsky that a number of fakes (so-called Fauxbergé), including five eggs,[20] were on show at the exhibition “Fabergé: Jeweller to the Imperial Court” (25 November 2020 – 14 March 2021).

История скандальной выставки Фаберже в Эрмитаже и тех, кто за ней стоит" (Fatal Eggs.

Museum staff, who spoke to the BBC on condition of anonymity, expressed bewilderment at the partnership and exhibition, but added that they preferred not to get involved in this matter.