Paris (AFP) — A Chinese woman has been arrested and charged over the theft of gold from the Natural History Museum in Paris, in one of several recent high-profile break-ins targeting French cultural institutions, a prosecutor said Tuesday.
The theft — by what the museum’s director at the time said was an “extremely professional team” — took place on September 16, a little over a month before an audacious jewellery heist at the world-famous Louvre museum on Sunday.
A 24-year-old Chinese woman was arrested in Barcelona on September 30 over the Natural History Museum break-in and theft of gold worth more than $1 million, Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau said.
The suspect was handed over to French authorities on October 13 and was charged with theft and criminal conspiracy and put in provisio