British police have uncovered cash, handguns, drugs, art and valuable jewelry after searching safe deposit boxes believed to have been used by criminals, a spokesman said yesterday.
London’s Metropolitan Police said a total of £39 million (US$76.8 million) in cash was seized, as well as counterfeit currency, counterfeit passports, checkbooks and credit cards.
A 60-year-old man and a 44-year-old woman have both been arrested in connection with suspected money laundering, both of whom have been released on bail. They were not identified.
Police said that they recovered two handguns, a “substantial” amount of cannabis, crack cocaine and an unidentified white powder and pills.
Armed police are guarding three London premises that are still being searched, while raids on seven addresses were carried out a week ago.
Initial expert opinion has suggested that of the four works of art seized, three are in the style of 17th century Dutch artists, while the fourth is a 20th century portrait, though all four will be sent for more analysis.
Reports say the seizures may solve the riddle of what happened to the gold bullion stolen during the Brink’s-Mat heist a quarter of a century earlier.
The crime panicked the international gold market, reconfigured London’s criminal map and left a trail of murders in a gangland feud over the missing bounty.
The gold “grains” — carefully wrapped in plastic and wedged inside travel luggage — were hidden inside one of the deposit boxes. Scotland Yard sources, pointing out it was too early to glean the origin of the gold, have confirmed they are examining the “possibility” that it came from the 1983 heist in which bullion worth £26 million was stolen from the Brink’s-Mat warehouse near Heathrow Airport by six armed robbers.
Commander Allan Gibson of Scotland Yard’s specialist crime directorate said his officers had never seen anything like it. The haul is thought to be the single largest discovery of unexplained gold seen in Britain.
Although the Metropolitan Police would not reveal the weight of the discovery, Gibson said the suitcases were so heavy officers struggled to pick them up. The weight of the stolen Brink’s-Mat gold was three-and-a-half tonnes.
Four people jailed in the landmark Hong Kong national security trial of "47 democrats" accused of conspiracy to commit subversion were freed today after more than four years behind bars, the second group to be released in a month. Among those freed was long-time political and LGBTQ activist Jimmy Sham (岑子杰), who also led one of Hong Kong’s largest pro-democracy groups, the Civil Human Rights Front, which disbanded in 2021. "Let me spend some time with my family," Sham said after arriving at his home in the Kowloon district of Jordan. "I don’t know how to plan ahead because, to me, it feels
Polish presidential candidates offered different visions of Poland and its relations with Ukraine in a televised debate ahead of next week’s run-off, which remains on a knife-edge. During a head-to-head debate lasting two hours, centrist Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski, from Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s governing pro-European coalition, faced the Eurosceptic historian Karol Nawrocki, backed by the right-wing populist Law and Justice party (PiS). The two candidates, who qualified for the second round after coming in the top two places in the first vote on Sunday last week, clashed over Poland’s relations with Ukraine, EU policy and the track records of their
‘A THREAT’: Guyanese President Irfan Ali called on Venezuela to follow international court rulings over the region, whose border Guyana says was ratified back in 1899 Misael Zapara said he would vote in Venezuela’s first elections yesterday for the territory of Essequibo, despite living more than 100km away from the oil-rich Guyana-administered region. Both countries lay claim to Essequibo, which makes up two-thirds of Guyana’s territory and is home to 125,000 of its 800,000 citizens. Guyana has administered the region for decades. The centuries-old dispute has intensified since ExxonMobil discovered massive offshore oil deposits a decade ago, giving Guyana the largest crude oil reserves per capita in the world. Venezuela would elect a governor, eight National Assembly deputies and regional councilors in a newly created constituency for the 160,000
North Korea has detained another official over last week’s failed launch of a warship, which damaged the naval destroyer, state media reported yesterday. Pyongyang announced “a serious accident” at Wednesday last week’s launch ceremony, which crushed sections of the bottom of the new destroyer. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un called the mishap a “criminal act caused by absolute carelessness.” Ri Hyong-son, vice department director of the Munitions Industry Department of the Party Central Committee, was summoned and detained on Sunday, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported. He was “greatly responsible for the occurrence of the serious accident,” it said. Ri is the fourth person
RSS