Four men have been sentenced to prison terms ranging from four years and nine months to 11 years for the theft of the gold treasure from the Celtic-Roman Museum in the southern Gwerman town of Manching.
The regional court in the city of Ingolstadt just to the north-west of Manching was convinced of the defendants’ guilt, even though they remained silent on all charges and their defence lawyers demanded acquittals.
With the conviction for aggravated gang theft, the court largely followed the prosecution’s request, which had asked for prison sentences ranging from 6.5 to 12 years.
The accused have been in pre-trial detention for about two years.
The high-profile museum break-in took place at the Celtic-Roman Museum in Manching in the state of Bavaria on the night of November 22, 2022. Hundreds of 2,100-year-old Celtic gold coins vanished in a span of just minutes.
The suspects are said to have first damaged the town’s telecommunications network in order to disable the alarm system at the museum. They then broke into the building and within minutes had opened the display case containing the coins and emptied it out.
Archaeologists discovered the 483 coins and a larger gold nugget during excavations in Manching in 1999. It is considered the largest Celtic gold find of the 20th century. A few years later, the gold treasure became the flagship exhibit of the newly built museum in Manching.
The prosecution estimates the material value of the approximately 3.7-kilogram gold treasure at €1.5 million ($1.7 million). However, scientists emphasize that the collection is irreplaceable. The majority of the loot remains missing to this day.
The Bavarian State Criminal Police Office established a special commission after the break-in. Officers tracked down four men from northern Germany after securing discarded burglary tools near the museum and finding a DNA trace.
The main suspect, a 48-year-old man from Plate, near the city of Schwerin, was sentenced to 11 years in prison. His co-defendants included two Schwerin residents, aged 44 and 52, who were sentenced to seven years and four years and nine months, and a 45-year-old man from Berlin, who received an eight-year prison sentence.
The Berlin man was found carrying several small gold nuggets at the time of his arrest. The nuggets were believed to be some 70 melted-down coins from the museum.
All four have remained silent throughout the trial, which began in January at the Ingolstadt Regional Court.
The group is also accused of a series of other burglaries in Germany and Austria, during which safes or cash machines were broken into, among other things.
The court conducted hearings on more than 30 days over the course of half a year. Around 120 witnesses and experts were heard.