Magistrates placed a 24-year-old Chinese national in provisional detention on suspicion of organized theft and criminal conspiracy following the theft of gold nuggets on September 16 from the National Museum of Natural History, according to France 24.
The young woman was spotted when Spanish police arrested her at Barcelona's El Prat airport on September 30. Acting on a European arrest warrant issued by the Brigade de répression du banditisme (BRB), officers discovered about one kilogram of melted gold in her luggage as she was about to board a flight to China, according to The New York Times.
The prosecutor's office claims that she entered the museum alone shortly after 1 a.m. and left around 4 a.m. CCTV footage shows a figure dressed in black cutting through two exterior doors with a grinder before attacking the mineralogy pavilion's display case with a blowtorch. Investigators found the grinder, a screwdriver, three gas bottles, and a saw at the scene.
The loot, weighing approximately six kilograms, is valued at €1.5 million. “Its historical and scientific value is inestimable,” said Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau, quoted by France 24. Among the stolen items were a Bolivian nugget bequeathed to the Academy of Sciences in the 18th century, gold from the Ural Mountains donated by Tsar Nicholas I in 1833, a Californian nugget discovered during the 19th-century gold rush, and an Australian specimen weighing five kilograms unearthed in 1990.
A gold-bearing quartz from French Guiana is also missing, confirmed the curators, who were alerted by maintenance workers who found debris on the floor before dawn. The material damage has been estimated at €50,000. “The choice of items was not random,” museum director Emmanuel Skoulios told France 2.
Investigators are trying to determine whether the melted ingot seized in Spain came from the theft. Although cameras show only one person in the building, police have not ruled out the presence of accomplices; about 60 officials from the BRB and the Central Office for the Fight against Trafficking in Cultural Property are working on the case.
On the night of the incident, the alarm and video surveillance systems had been disabled by a cyberattack, a vulnerability that the burglar is believed to have exploited. This three-hour window prompted lawmakers to call for hearings on heritage protection, while Culture Minister Rachida Dati ordered a parallel administrative investigation.
If convicted, the suspect faces up to 15 years in prison. She remains in custody while authorities examine her phone records, trace the melted gold, and check whether the nuggets have already been broken up and resold.
Produced with the assistance of a news-analysis system.