MOSCOW, June 5 (RAPSI, Yulia Glozman) – A criminal case against alleged gang members charged with stealing paintings by famous Russian artists Isaak Levitan and Ivan Shishkin has been forwarded to court for hearing, the Investigative Committee’s press service reports Tuesday.

According to investigators, from 2012 to 2016, the defendants organized a gang in the Nizhny Novgorod Region to mug and rob banks and commercial organizations. They stole over 80 million rubles ($1.3 million), the statement reads.

Moreover, they stole four paintings by Levitan worth over 180 million rubles ($3 million) from a state historical and art reserve museum in 2014, a painting by Shishkin valued at more than 66 million rubles ($1 million) and two works by artists Konstantin Korovin and Stanislav Zhukovsky in 2013, according to the Investigative Committee.

Two alleged gang members have pleaded guilty.