A Chinese-born woman has been charged for the theft of six gold nuggets worth about 1.5 million euros ($1.75m; £1.3m) from the Museum of Natural History in Paris last month, French prosecutors have said.
The woman was arrested in Barcelona trying to dispose of some melted gold, according to officials, and is being held in pre-trial detention.
Famous for its stuffed animals and bone collections, the museum is home to a mineralogy gallery, from the where the gold was taken. Police found an angle-grinder and a blowtorch at the scene.
The museum’s alarm and surveillance systems had been disabled by a cyberattack, with thieves apparently aware of this, French media reported at the time.
“The thieves, clearly very experienced and well-informed, exploited a security flaw that had not been identified during the last audit conducted in 2024 ,” a museum spokesperson told French newspaper Le Figaro.
Cleaners discovered the break-in when they arrived for work before dawn at the museum, which is part of the Sorbonne university and located near the Jardin des Plantes in central Paris.
The suspect was arrested by Spanish police on 30 September on a European Arrest Warrant and handed over to the French on the same day, officials said in a statement.
At the time of her arrest, she was in possession of around a kilo of melted-down gold. Investigations are continuing, the statement added. It is believed she was preparing to leave for China.
One of the largest stolen nuggets, originally from Australia, weighs 5kg. At the current gold price, it would be worth around €585,000.
“We are dealing with an extremely professional team, perfectly aware of where they needed to go, and with professional equipment,” Emmanuel Skoulios, the museum director, said to French broadcasters.
“It is absolutely not by chance that they went for these specific items,” he told France 2 television last month.
The charges come just days after a separate daring heist at the Louvre saw thieves make off with the priceless French crown jewels.
On Sunday, “professional” thieves broke into the world’s most-visited museum, stealing eight valued items before escaping on scooters. The raid took less than eight minutes, police said.
Experts told the BBC that items are likely to be broken up and sold for a fraction of their worth.
“This won’t be their first heist,” Dutch art detective Arthur Brand said on Monday.
“They have done things before, other burglaries. They are confident and they thought, ‘we might get away with this’, and went for it.”
At least four French museums – including the Louvre and the natural history museum – have been robbed in recent months, according to media reports.
