German police arrest 2 suspects in gold coin heist

BERLIN – German special police units raided several homes in Berlin early Wednesday in connection with the brazen heist of a 100-kilogram (221-pound) gold coin stolen from one of the city’s most famous museums earlier this year.

Police arrested at least two suspects during early morning raids in the city’s Neukoelln neighbourhood.

“We assume that the two suspects match the ones seen on the video footage from surveillance cameras” during the burglary, police spokesman Winfrid Wenzel told The Associated Press.

He said searches of the apartments were still continuing, but so far the coin hadn’t been found.

The Canadian “Big Maple Leaf” coin, worth several million euros (dollars), was stolen from the Bode museum in March.

At least two burglars broke into the museum at night, using a ladder to climb to a window from elevated railway tracks. They grabbed the coin, loaded it onto a wheelbarrow and then carted it out of the building and along the tracks across the Spree river before descending into a park on a rope and fleeing in a getaway car.

Police say the three-centimetre (1.2-inch) thick coin, with a diameter of 53 centimetres (20.9 inches) has a face value of 1 million Canadian dollars ($750,000). By weight alone, however, it would be worth almost $4.5 million at market prices. The coin was likely damaged in the theft.