The gendarmerie is looking for the owners of 1,500 jewels stolen in the West of France
By Julien SureauPublished onNews NantesSee my news
This is only a small sample presented this Friday morning by investigators from the Nantes research section. Rings, necklaces, pendants, watches, clocks… In total, 1,500 jewels found during the dismantling of international gold trafficking await their legitimate owners.
Nearly a year after the arrest of ten people in France, Germany and Austria, the gendarmerie is launching an appeal for victims on a dedicated website where all the stolen jewelry is presented there, announces Colonel Pascal Péresse, unit commander.
“These goods come from burglaries that may have been committed in the Great West of France during the last three, four years, he specifies.
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The Nantes watchmaker melted gold at home
A new stage in the investigation of this case which mobilized five gendarmerie investigators for two years. Investigations which have already led to the indictment of nine people, aged between 31 and 62 years.
The main suspect, a watchmaker from Nantes based in rue Jean-Jacques Rousseau then cours des 50-Otages, was selling jewelery stolen from the manager of a gold shop in Frankfurt.
"He built up a stock to melt the gold with a machine bought for 500 euros from Amazon to resell the ingots to his accomplice", describes the gendarme who led the investigation called "Watches 44".
At the height of the traffic, the jeweler from Nantes traveled up to twice a month, first by car and then by train. It was also in a TGV, on his return from a trip to Germany, that he was arrested with more than 37,000 euros in cash on him.
According to the investigators, this merchant of Iranian nationality would have carried out a large number of transactions over at least three years, the total of which is estimated at more than one million euros.
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Wife and daughter also charged
To date, nine people are therefore indicted for concealment of theft in an organized gang, aggravated money laundering or criminal association. Among these suspects, placed under judicial control, the wife of the watchmaker as well as his daughter, who ran another shop in rue de Budapest.
An intermediary, an employee of a caterer, was also charged, suspected of fueling the traffic thanks to his entries to the flea market on Place Viarme.
The judicial operation, led by a magistrate from the Nantes court, allowed the seizure - in addition to the 1,500 stolen jewels - of the real estate and bank accounts of the main suspects. In Germany and Austria, criminal assets (villas and properties, vehicles, jewelry, diamonds, cash, gold bars) for a total estimated at more than 3 million euros were also confiscated.
The jewels photographed on the website put online by the gendarmerie, if they are not identified, will be handed over to justice at the end of the procedure. But Lieutenant-Colonel David Bolze, commander of the Rezé gendarmerie company, is rather confident. "It works well," he says. Last year, on another case, we managed to return 85 of the hundred objects that had been seized. »
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