Musicians’ instruments confiscated at Domodedovo Airport, despite having passports

Returning from a tour of Germany last Tuesday, two musicians from the Moscow Philharmonic had their instruments confiscated by Customs at Domodedovo Airport, despite both having passports for their instruments.

One of the musicians, violinist Elena Lavrskaya, reported on her social media: ‘The plane landed and, it seemed, the hardest part was behind us – we were home. But for me and for another musician in our orchestra, there were difficulties to come … We passed passport control and when crossing the customs control for musicians, we were asked to open our cases and to show our instruments with our passports for them.’

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Although this was a usual procedure for the musicians, most of whom crossed the customs border without any problems, Lavrskaya and another violinist were detained by the senior senior state customs inspector of the OSTP 2 t / p Domodedovo Airport (passenger) Shlyupkin S. N.

According to Lavrskaya, ‘The inspector made a complaint: ”these instruments are 100 years old, you needed to change your passport.” When I asked him to show me this law, he refused at first, then admitted that there was no such law. But he said that he would not return the instruments and confiscated them to verify the authenticity of the instrument passports’.

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The next day Lavrskaya heard more: ‘The inspector (unfortunately, I don’t know his last name) promised to hand it over to the head of customs, who would make a decision in the morning …I calmed down a bit and was delighted. But no, the miracle did not happen. All day I waited for the call but the phone was silent. Finally, I managed to get through to the customs service. The answer was: “Who could promise you this? No one will hand your case over to the chief and no one will consider it. The instruments will be returned after the examination.”

She concludes: ‘No one knows how my story will end. It is terribly disappointing and disappointing that such people work in customs … I just want as many people as possible to learn about this story… To deprive a musician of an instrument is the same as chopping off a bird’s wings … ’