The case is a parchment from 1347, in which the pope approved the establishment of a university. The university presented the documents to the public in June 2018, historians did not know about them until then. According to its rector Tomáš Zima, Charles University signed a purchase agreement with J&T Bank, and neither the price nor the previous fates of the document were published. “At the time of the purchase, the university was not aware that the documents should come from criminal activity,” said Václav Hájek, a spokesman for Charles University.
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According to the indictment, valuable documents disappeared from the archives more than a hundred years ago, the head of the antiques store Salmon acquired them in 2018 and immediately sold them to the university. According to the court, Salmon knew from the expert that the documents had been stolen and that he should hand them over to the state archives. “The only mistake I made was not selling it zero in London to anyone else,” Salmon said in court. He defended himself by buying documents from an antique dealer in Austria and had nothing to do with the theft. But the court did not believe him.
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According to the plaintiff, the twenty million crowns that Charles University should receive are secured in Salmon’s account from the preparatory proceedings. The documents are in the university vault, according to the Czech Television, a police seal remains on them.
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