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An investigation into a tiger skin that Gov. Yevgeny Nazdratenko allegedly gave Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko has come to a standstill, an official says.

Environmental prosecutor Yevgeny Pavelko said he is getting little cooperation from people who attended the Feb. 24 reception where the gift was reportedly given.

The daily Vladivostok, whose publisher was at the event, reported that Nazdratenko gave the skin of a rare Siberian tiger to the Belarus president. The paper said the skin was accompanied by the proper documents, a statement environmentalists have questioned.

Pavelko said he assumed the gift really was made because the krai has issued no denial, as is its usual practice.

Still, out of 80 people at the reception for Lukashenko, he hasn’t found anyone who will admit to being an eyewitness, he said. “The people I interrogated just say they didn’t see the skin being given,” he said.

Pavelko added that he doesn’t have the authority to interview the governor. Only the krai prosecutor can do that, and Pavelko doesn’t have enough evidence to give the prosecutor.

Valery Shafranovsky, deputy head of the Krai Committee for the Environment, said he knows nothing except what he read in the Vladivostok. “And it is not our business to protect tigers,” he added.

The krai press center has said it has no information on the skin.

Vladimir Schetinin, the head of federal Tiger Department of the State Committee on Ecology, has expressed outrage about the gift. But he says he couldn’t do anything about the case; it is the prosecutor’s responsibility.

Exactly where the alleged gift came from remains uncertain. The Vladivostok News reported March 6 that the skin may have disappeared from a criminal case in Olga, in northern Primorye. However, the source of that story says she hadn’t intended to be an authoritative reference on the matter.

In a prepared statement, B.J. Chisholm, director of the Far Eastern branch of ISAR: Initiative for Social Action and Renewal, wrote that “the organization does not have verified information on the origins of the skin.”

The Los Angeles Times reported that the skin came from a Primorye man-eater that was killed in December. But Pavelko said this report is wrong. He knows where that skin is, he said.

Taking a tiger skin to Belarus could run afoul of international treaties forbidding trade in endangered species. Fewer than 450 of the world’s largest cats remain in the wild.