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Cash of the Celtic Treasure are on show on the native Celtic and Roman Museum in Manching, Germany, Might 31, 2006. A senior official mentioned Wednesday that organized crime teams had been probably behind the theft of an enormous horde of historical gold cash stolen from a museum in southern Germany this week.
Frank Maechler/AP
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Frank Maechler/AP
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Cash of the Celtic Treasure are on show on the native Celtic and Roman Museum in Manching, Germany, Might 31, 2006. A senior official mentioned Wednesday that organized crime teams had been probably behind the theft of an enormous horde of historical gold cash stolen from a museum in southern Germany this week.
Frank Maechler/AP
BERLIN — Thieves who broke right into a southern German museum and stole lots of of historical gold cash obtained out and in in 9 minutes with out elevating the alarm, officers mentioned Wednesday, in an extra signal that the heist was the work of organized criminals.
Police have launched a global hunt for the thieves and their loot, consisting of 483 Celtic cash and a lump of unworked gold that had been found throughout an archeological dig close to the present-day city of Manching in 1999.
Guido Limmer, the deputy head of Bavaria’s State Felony Police Workplace, described how at 1:17 a.m. (0017 GMT) on Tuesday cables had been lower at a telecoms hub about one kilometer (lower than a mile) from the Celtic and Roman Museum in Manching, knocking out communications networks within the area.
Safety programs on the museum recorded {that a} door was pried open at 1:26 a.m. after which how the thieves left once more at 1:35 a.m., Limmer mentioned. It was in these 9 minutes that the culprits will need to have smashed open a show cupboard and scooped out the treasure.
Limmer mentioned there have been “parallels” between the heist in Manching and the theft of priceless jewels in Dresden and a big gold coin in Berlin in recent times. Each have been blamed on a Berlin-based crime household.
“Whether or not there is a hyperlink we won’t say,” he added. “Solely this a lot: we’re in contact with colleagues to analyze all potential angles.”
Bavaria’s minister of science and humanities, Markus Blume, mentioned proof pointed to the work of pros.
“It is clear that you do not merely march right into a museum and take this treasure with you,” he advised public broadcaster BR. “It is extremely secured and as such there is a suspicion that we’re fairly coping with a case of organized crime.”
Officers acknowledged, nonetheless, that there was no guard on the museum in a single day.
An alarm system was deemed to supply adequate safety, mentioned Rupert Gebhard, who heads the Bavarian State Archaeological Assortment in Munich.
Gebhard mentioned the hoard was of nice worth each for the area people in Manching and for archaeologists throughout Europe.
The bowl-shaped cash, relationship again to about 100 B.C., had been created from Bohemian river gold and present how the Celtic settlement at Manching had hyperlinks throughout Europe, he mentioned.
Gebhard estimated the worth of the treasure at about 1.6 million euros ($1.65 million).
“The archaeologists hope that the cash stay of their authentic state and reappear once more sooner or later,” he mentioned, including that they’re nicely documented and can be onerous to promote.
“The worst possibility, the melting down, would imply a complete loss for us,” he mentioned, noting that the fabric worth of the gold itself would solely run to about 250,000 euros at present market costs.
Gebhard mentioned the scale of the trove prompt it might need been “the struggle chest of a tribal chief.” It was discovered inside a sack buried beneath constructing foundations, and was the largest such discovery made throughout common archaeological excavations in Germany within the twentieth century.
Limmer, the deputy police chief, mentioned Interpol and Europol have already been alerted to the cash’ theft and a 20-strong particular investigations unit, codenamed ‘Oppidum’ after the Latin time period for a Celtic settlement, has been established to trace down the culprits.