Police in Berlin have raided homes and jewellery shops on suspicions they could be connected to efforts to gradually fence gold from a 100kg (220lb) Canadian coin that was stolen from a museum in the German capital.
The coin, with an estimated value of €3.75m (£3.4m), was stolen from Berlin’s Bode Museum in 2017 and has not yet been recovered.
The morning raids were focused on eight suspects aged between 14 and 51 of various nationalities, police said.
They are alleged to have been part of a ring that obtained stolen gold in order to melt it down and forge collector coins, then sell them as genuine through jewellery stores operated by them or their relatives. Some of the counterfeits are already circulating, police said.
The searches led to the discovery of counterfeit coins, forgery tools and a “five-digit” sum of cash, police said.
“The evaluation of the evidence is ongoing,” police said. “Among other things, a possible connection to the theft of the gold coin from the Bode Museum is being examined.”
Berlin prosecutors said there were no arrests but that the investigation was continuing.
The searches came just two days after the arrest of a key suspect in the spectacular theft of 18th-century jewels from a Dresden museum last year, who is from a crime family linked to the Canadian gold coin theft.
Mohamed Remmo, 21, was arrested by Berlin authorities in a car in the Neukölln district of the city on Monday evening. His twin brother, Abdul Majed Remmo, remains on the run.
Police and prosecutors would not comment on whether there was a connection between the arrest and the searches, but members of the same family were convicted earlier this year for the Canadian gold coin theft.
Cousins Ahmed Remmo and Wissam Remmo, along with a friend who worked as a security guard at the museum, were all convicted of the Canadian gold coin heist and sentenced to several years in prison.
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