The & apos; Child Juan & apos; intended to build a Mercedes in the castle of Fontainebleau to steal the Chinese imperial jewels

Strip the mountain goat. When the Chinese mafia presumably hired Juan María Moreno Gordillo , alias 'El Niño Juan' , to steal certain pieces of Asian art in the castle of Fontainebleau , he probably thought he hired a reputed Spanish thief, surrounded by a serious team and professional, with more than 120 arrests behind him and a powerful sign even before the Spanish Police, who admits to EL MUNDO that "once he is in a car is a very important element".

Thus, the five Spaniards, telling the luncheonman 'Niño Juan', who crossed the border and began to prepare the coup in France, were assigned a Chinese national whose main role was to pay, burn card to mount the 'stick'. And he burned it (Chinese too, by the way). The Spaniards, in addition to visiting the Eiffel Tower and the PSG stadium to mislead, bought levers, cold cuts and flame cutting tools to melt metal, acquired black clothes (slippers included) and visited the palace several times to study it.

A lot of professionalism and a lot of preparation, but then it turns out that, at the time of breaking into place, the 'Child Juan' did not plan to change his 'modus operandi' much, which made him famous: the pure and hard moon landing. Moreno Gordillo, with almost as many years as arrests behind him (33 years, 31 arrests counting this), was going to build a car , presumably a newly stolen Mercedes, in one of the access doors to the royal palace 62 kilometers from Paris that It was the residence of 34 French kings between the twelfth and nineteenth centuries, and where Eugenia de Montijo, wife of Napoleon III , treasured the pieces of Chinese art that commissioned him to steal from the Orcasitas luncheon.

A picture of a showcase with marked parts

The thieves had a picture of the showcase in question that had to be undressed and marked with a cross the concrete pieces that the client wanted - presumably for himself and not to sell them - but the Chinese emissary who was attached to the group, that of the card, I did not see clearly that of embedding a 'mercedes' of high displacement by a certain door of the wall, "a fence that they already had identified, that gave to a passage from which the place was accessed", police sources explain to this diary.

The French Police, in any case, did not want to sit and wait to see it: alerted by the Spanish that Moreno Gordillo "with the booty inside a car is difficult to stop," he stopped the band members between dawn and the morning of December 28 and thus disrupted what would have been one of the artistic robberies (for the purpose of the robbery, not for the form) most played of recent times: the pieces marked in the photo apprehended to the 'Child Juan' and his minions are of "incalculable" value, admits Fernando Porcel, head of the Historical Heritage Brigade and the Spanish side of the investigation: "It is not known how much that can be worth, because it has never been in the market," says Porcel. "Surely it was not going to be sold. In Asian culture, having something of similar value just to enjoy it, without anyone else knowing, is very widespread. In the West we may not understand it, but there we do."

When the French judge began to take a statement from the detainees, practically all Spaniards accepted their right not to testify, but not the Chinese national, who, according to sources of the investigation, revealed that the 'Child Juan' wanted to embed his car in the palace of Fontainebleau , take the jewels and burn out tire, and he did not agree with that plan.

Four cars, two of them stolen

The French gendarmes had collected enough information, however, to prove a criminal attempt that, according to investigators, is much more punished in France than in Spain. They had been following the curious troupe around the country for several days. Based in a hotel in Nemours, 80 kilometers from Paris, the detainees had traveled from Spain in two cars, a Toyota Yaris and a Volkswagen Passat , and had stolen two others on French soil: a Renault Space and the aforementioned Mercedes .

Simulating each one to go by his side except in the hotel, they had studied in detail the fortress, which already suffered in 2015 a theft, this consummated, also of pieces of Chinese art, which arrived in France in the colonial era from imperial collections. The day before their arrest they had passed through a nearby Decathlon to buy the black clothes with which they illusoryly intended to go unnoticed. And when they were located by the gendarmes at the beginning of their follow-up, they were reunited with four Chinese nationals who had arrived in the Gallic country in an SUV with an Italian license plate (another sign that points to the Chinese mafia).

The Spanish Police, on the other hand, has also done its work, apart from giving the French notice of the presence of the 'Child Juan': it has been detected, according to sources of the investigation, that the 'work' was also offered to several other bullfighters in Madrid, especially in the 'mecca' of the business of embedding cars in buildings, stealing and running: the neighborhoods of Orcasitas and Usera , in which there is also a large Chinese presence and where the commission took place. Finally it was the 'Child Juan' who won the 'contest' that ultimately led him to a French jail.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project