The case surfaced Sunday when businessman and stamp collector Tiit Pruuli posted screenshots from a philately-focused Facebook group showing an unopened block of original Atlanta Olympics postage stamps from 1996 for sale.

The post, offering the stamps auction-style with a starting price of €50, was made under the name of Anne-May Nagel, the wife of Omniva philately chief Hannes Nagel.

Pruuli alleged the items had "clearly come from Omniva cabinets" and mocked the state-owned postal services provider over the incident.

Addressing Minister of Regional Affairs Hendrik Terras (Eesti 200), he asked, "Minister Terras, is Omniva's privatization already underway?"

Commenting under Pruuli's post Monday evening, Hannes Nagel said he was resigning and apologized for what he called a mistake.

He said the stamp sheets had indeed come from an Omniva warehouse, where they turned up during preparations for a relocation. Nagel said a colleague had handed them out believing the stamps had been written off and were meant to be destroyed.

"I made a mistake accepting the sample sheets from a colleague," he wrote. "The stamp sheets have been returned to Omniva."

Nagel confirmed the stamps were unusable in the postal system and that he made no profit from them. He also acknowledged he should not have accepted or considered selling the items in his role, even if they had been written off.

"I submitted my resignation to take responsibility for accepting written-off stamp sheets and for considering them, including selling them, as a private individual," he wrote.

'I use my wife's account'

Nagel also asked commenters to please leave his wife out of the matter, saying he was the one who had put the stamps up for sale under his wife's Facebook account — something he admits he does regularly.

"I have used, and continue to use, my wife's account to sell stamps from my private collection because I no longer have access to the group after being blocked from it," Nagel wrote, explaining he used to participate in the group under his own name.

Omniva communications chief Madiken Oja confirmed Nagel no longer works for the company.

She said Omniva is investigating how the stamp sheets ended up in private hands and whether any company rules were broken.

Oja stressed that removing historical philately items from the company and reselling them privately would clearly be in conflict with the principles of transparency and acting in good faith.

"If a violation is identified, we will respond in accordance with internal procedures," she added.

The controversy comes just over a month after the Estonian government approved plans to privatize state-owned shares in Omniva, opening the state-owned postal and logistics company to private investors in a move that has critics concerned about the future of Estonia's postal services.

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