Germany finds most items stolen in 2019 Dresden jewellery robbery, police say
- The discovery comes in the middle of the trial of six suspects over the raid on the Green Vault museum in the city of Dresden’s Royal Palace in 2019
- Authorities retrieved a total of 31 items in Berlin, police said. Insurance experts had said the loot stolen in 2019 was worth at least €113.8 million (US$120 million)
German authorities said on Saturday they had found a “considerable portion” of items stolen in a spectacular 2019 robbery of priceless 18th-century jewels from a state museum.
The authorities retrieved a total of 31 items in the night of Friday to Saturday in the capital Berlin, police and prosecutors said.
The discovery comes in the middle of the trial of six suspects over the brazen nighttime raid on the Green Vault museum in the eastern city of Dresden’s Royal Palace in November 2019.
The thieves grabbed 21 pieces of jewellery and other valuables from the collection of the Saxon ruler Augustus the Strong, encrusted with more than 4,300 individual diamonds.
Insurance experts had said the loot stolen in 2019 was worth at least €113.8 million (US$120 million at the current rate), with German media dubbing it the biggest art robbery in modern history.
The jewels included a sword with a diamond-encrusted hilt and a shoulder piece which contains the famous 49-carat Dresden white diamond.
There had been no trace of the jewels.
But “exploratory talks” between the defence and the prosecution towards a possible settlement and the return of the stolen items led to a breakthrough, police and prosecutors said, without providing further details.