Five men have been jailed for a £100million heist on a museum dubbed “as secure as Fort Knox”.
The gang carried out the “highly planned” raid on the The Green Vault in Dresden, Germany, one of the world’s most valuable collections of treasures.
The theft included 21 pieces of jewellery containing more than 4,300 diamonds, with a total insured value of at least 113.8m Euros (£99m).
Treasures included a 63.8cm (25in) figure of a Moor studded with emeralds and a 648-carat sapphire – a royal gift from Russia ’s Tsar Peter the Great.
Police recovered many jewels, including a diamond encrusted sword. But it is feared the rest of the loot – including a rare diamond called the White Stone of Saxony – may never be found.
Prosecutors described it as a meticulously planned heist, with a fire used to cut street lights so they could get in and out in darkness.
The gang prepared their entry point in advance, using a hydraulic cutting machine to saw through the bars of a protective window before taping them back into place.
In the early hours of November 25, 2019, they set fire to a circuit breaker panel near the museum, plunging the surrounding streets into darkness while two of the men slipped inside.
CCTV footage captured the thieves wearing masks and wielding axes as they entered and smashed glass display cases. They sprayed a foam fire extinguisher to cover their tracks.
They made their getaway in an Audi which they dumped in a car park, and torched. The thieves are members of the “Remmo clan”, an extended family known for ties to organised crime, and were yesterday jailed for up to six years.
Four of the gang admitted their involvement and gave police details of where to recover some jewels.
One of the world’s oldest museums. The Green Vault was established in 1723 and contains the treasury of Augustus the Strong of Saxony, with around 4,000 objects.
In 2010, then-museum director Martin Roth boasted in an interview that it was “as secure as Fort Knox”.
Marion Ackermann, general director of Dresden’s State Art Collections, said: “They had no idea of what they had taken.”
