R52m coin theft: suspects held
BERLIN: Brother, can you spare a gigantic gold coin?
Hundreds of special German police officers executed raids across several buildings across southern Berlin early on Wednesday, nabbing four suspects in the hunt for a 99.8kg gold coin valued at about $3.9 million (R51.7m). It was stolen from Berlin’s Bode Museum in March, where it had been since 2010.
The police who conducted the raids wore masks and carried heavy weapons.
The four suspects are related and between 18 and 20 years old. The coin was not recovered in the operation.
“We assume the coin was partially or completely sold,” Carsten Pfohl of the Berlin state criminal office said.
Police were picking apart clothes and vehicles used by the suspects in a bid to find traces of gold left behind.
The orchestrated raid was the latest wrinkle in the coin’s journey from Canada to the Bode to the hands of at least two thieves, who stole the coin in a brazen night-time heist on March 27 that sounds more like a heist film than a museum robbery. An elevated railway near the building aided the burglars, who used a ladder to climb into a museum window and slip into the exhibit.
The police said an insider may have helped identify the coin, which was stolen as other exhibitions remained untouched.
Once out of the museum, the thieves loaded the coin into a wheelbarrow, slipped into a park using a rope and fled in a getaway car.
The coin was produced by the Royal Canadian Mint in 2007. Nicknamed “The Big Maple Leaf ”, Guinness World Records named it the world’s largest coin, according to the mint’s website. Its 99.999% purity and gold content boosts the actual value.
The mint does not track coins after they are sold, Alex Reeves, a spokesperson for the mint, told The Washington Post. Five replicas of The Big Maple Leaf were sold privately, Reeves said, including the one stolen from the Bode.
The coin is “about the size of a manhole cover, more or less”, Reeves said. The original remains at the mint.
The museum did not immediately return requests for comment.
“Why did the Royal Canadian Mint make the world’s purest and largest gold bullion coin?” The mint’s website asks rhetorically. – Washington Post