Barcelona arrest linked to Paris gold theft at Natural History Museum

A 24-year-old Chinese national was arrested in Barcelona on September 30 and has been charged in Paris over a September 16 break-in at the National Museum of Natural History in which nearly six kilograms of native gold was stolen, Paris prosecutors said. Authorities estimate the value of the missing pieces at roughly 1.5 million euros, and the suspect was handed over to French police on October 13, charged with theft and criminal conspiracy and placed in provisional detention.

Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau said investigators found the suspect attempting to dispose of about one kilogram of melted gold pieces at the time of her arrest. Prosecutors said the suspect had left France on the day of the burglary and was preparing to return to China. The inquiry remains active as authorities seek to determine the whereabouts of the remaining items and whether others were involved.

Museum staff discovered the theft after a cleaner reported debris in the mineralogy gallery, prompting a curator to find that display cases housing gold nuggets had been broken into. The stolen material included nuggets with documented provenance: pieces linked to the 19th-century California gold rush,...