A Chinese woman has been arrested and charged over the theft of gold from the Natural History Museum in Paris, in one of several recent high-profile break-ins targeting French cultural institutions, a prosecutor said on Tuesday.
Advertisement
The theft – by what the museum’s director at the time said was an “extremely professional team” – took place on September 16, about a month before an audacious jewellery heist at the world-famous Louvre Museum on Sunday.
A 24-year-old Chinese woman was arrested in Barcelona on September 30 over the Natural History Museum break-in and theft of gold worth more than US$1 million, Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau said.
The suspect was handed over to French authorities on October 13 and was charged with theft and criminal conspiracy and put in provisional detention the same day.
Investigations showed she had left France the day of the break-in and was preparing to return to China.
Advertisement
At the time of her arrest, she was trying to dispose of nearly 1kg (2.2 pounds) of melted gold pieces, the prosecutor said, without providing more details.