Berlin – Berlin police released on Friday photos of the tools they believe were used in this week’s daring robbery of a 100-kilogram gold coin from one of the city’s top museums as their investigation into the heist seemed to run into a dead end.
The items in the photos included an axe, a wheelbarrow, a door wedge, a flat board with castors and a ladder which apparently helped the thieves to make off with the coin worth about 3.8 million euros (4.14 million dollars) from the Bode Museum in the heart of the German capital.
The police investigation is running in several directions, including the possibility that the thieves were acting on inside information when they erected the ladder on a rail line adjacent to the museum in the early hours of Monday morning.
They then scaled a wall on the museum before breaking into the building through a window.
Once inside the building, the thieves broke into an armoured glass display cabinet on the museum’s top floor containing the coin, which they transported away in the wheelbarrow.
The German media have described the robbery as a poor man’s “Ocean’s Eleven” after the 2001 Hollywood movie.
The media have also been asking why the robbers apparently failed to set off any alarms during the theft.
However, neither the police nor the museum have commented on the building’s alarm system.
Despite having so far received about 37 tips from the public, the police appear no closer to tracking down the coin.
Police now hope that the publication of the photos might prompt more witnesses to come forward.
They say the thieves left the ladder behind before apparently making their escape along the rail tracks sometime between 2 am and 4 am (0000-0200 GMT Monday).
Issued by the Royal Canadian Mint in 2007, the coin has a face value of 1 million Canadian dollars.
However, the current gold price means that the market value of the coin could be as high as 3.74 million euros, experts said.
One of only five in the world, the coin has a diameter of 53 centimetres and is 3 centimetres thick.
Known as “Big Maple Leaf” after Canada’s national symbol, the coin is also one of the world’s largest gold coins. It has been part of the Bode Museum’s valuable coin collection since 2010.
It features a portrait of Queen Elizabeth II on the front and three maple leaves on the back.
-dpa
