{"id":3471,"date":"2012-12-10T07:33:24","date_gmt":"2012-12-10T07:33:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/praag.org\/?p=3471"},"modified":"2012-12-10T07:33:24","modified_gmt":"2012-12-10T07:33:24","slug":"gold-digging-in-paris","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/praag.org\/?p=3471","title":{"rendered":"Gold-digging in Paris"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"\"<\/a>Last week, police in the French capital arrested three people as part of a widening grave robbery investigation.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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There was further public outrage after two masked intruders shot dead a 52-year old precious metal worker when he tried to stop them stealing gold from his foundry in the chic central Parisian district of Le Marais.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Police said sky-high market prices for precious metals are acting as a magnet for thieves with scant regard for the living or the dead.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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In Pantin cemetery, in the north of Paris, dozens of bodies have recently been dug up, with gold teeth and jewellery stolen from them.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Police sources said the three men seized last week were gravediggers employed by the city’s cemeteries.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Last month, four other men \u2013 three from the same Pantin cemetery \u2013 were arrested and placed under investigation for aggravated theft, grave robbery and violating the integrity of a corpse.<\/p>\n

According to a source close to the investigation, the men removed personal belongings from corpses in the freshest graves, opening them in the dead of night.<\/p>\n

Two of the men were caught wearing miner’s helmets and gloves. Their boots were covered in fresh earth.<\/p>\n

One of the suspects was found to be carrying 10 gold teeth.<\/p>\n

After the initial arrests, the mayor of Paris, Bernard Delanoe, expressed his outrage and ordered the city authorities to step up surveillance of cemeteries.<\/p>\n

Even closer to the city centre, a metalworker was gunned down last Wednesday when he fought back against motorbike helmet-clad thieves trying to break into the gold workshop where had been employed for 36 years.<\/p>\n

A neighbour said she heard him shout: “I haven’t got the keys!” before chasing the attackers and being shot.<\/p>\n

Visiting the scene shortly after the murder, Manuel Valls, the interior minister, admitted: “There is a problem with regulating gold, with illegal workshops that recycle gold, which is often the product of theft or snatched gold chains.”<\/p>\n

Precious metal theft is big business is France. Earlier this year, the national rail operator, SNCF, launched a special security programme to clamp down on the massive theft of copper cables that has led to huge delays on its lines.<\/p>\n

Ten days ago, his men broke an illicit gold reseller network operating out of the Saint Denis train station in a northern Paris suburb. “It was a real open supermarket for stolen gold. All the thieves from across the capital came there to sell their wares for cash,” he told The Daily Telegraph.<\/p>\n

He said a large part of their booty ended up in Belgium, where “legislation is more relaxed”. – The Daily Telegraph<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week, police in the French capital arrested three people as part of a widening grave robbery investigation. There was further public outrage after two masked intruders shot dead a 52-year old precious metal worker when he tried to stop them stealing gold from his foundry in the chic central Parisian district of Le Marais. … Continue reading “Gold-digging in Paris”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3472,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49,3],"tags":[513,2280,2276,2281,2282,2279,1004,2277,2278],"class_list":["post-3471","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-europe","category-news","tag-belgium","tag-french-capital","tag-gold","tag-grave-robbery","tag-illicit-gold-reseller-network","tag-muggings","tag-paris","tag-precious-metals","tag-robberies"],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/praag.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/goldteeth.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3471","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3471"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3471\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3474,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3471\/revisions\/3474"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3472"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}