Four Germans were arrested in connection with the daring theft of a rare batch of coins from oror Celts from a Bavarian museum in November 2022, some of which were likely melted down, authorities said July 20.
The men, between the ages of 42 and 50 and with long suspected burglary records, were arrested the day before after searches of their homes in Schwerin, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania in northeastern Germany, authorities said at a news conference. in Munich.
Read alsoTheft of Celtic gold coins in Germany: the clue of an experienced team
The coins and pure gold stolen from the Manching Museum were the greatest Celtic gold find of the 20th century. Some pieces, found in 1999, can be dated to around 100 years BC. The entire treasure, whose market value is estimated at around 1.6 million euros, has not yet been found and “the search continues,” he added.
Part of the loot was irretrievably destroyed: 18 nuggets that probably consisted of 4 castings, perhaps to sell them more easily, were seized during searches, according to authorities. Some 70 pieces, out of a total of 483, are “apparently lost forever,” lamented the Bavarian Minister of the Arts, Markus Blume, who described the theft as “an attack on our cultural memory.”
“The hope remains of discovering intact parts,” he added, however, hoping that the suspects will provide clues. The latter, however, did not speak at this stage. They incur from 1 to 10 years in prison for “aggravated robbery in an organized gang.”
Police had first examined previous cases in German museums, including a spectacular diamond heist in Dresden in late 2019 and a 100-kilo gold coin in 2017 in Berlin to determine if they were the same team. A criminal gang of Lebanese origin, very active in Germany, known as the “Remmo clan”, was involved in these two packages.
In the Manching museum robbery, the suspects, two of whom had criminal records, were found through DNA evidence taken by police at the scene. This is how the authorities discovered that at least three of them had probably also been involved in 11 hitherto unsolved robberies between March 2014 and September 2022, at shops and a casino in Germany and Austria.
2023-07-20 13:46:58
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