In December 1746, a French ship sank near Belle-Ile-en-Mer.
The treasure it was carrying remained under the sea for more than two centuries.
In the 1970s, the wreck was discovered and looted by unscrupulous divers.
Several bars have been identified as they were offered for sale on an American auction site.
The investigation led to the indictment of three people.
The bullion was returned to France by the United States.
December 3, 1746. Returning from the Far East, the "Prince de Conty", a ship of the French East India Company, was shipwrecked near Belle-Ile-en-Mer (Morbihan).
The toll is heavy: of the 229 men on board, only 45 survived.
For more than 230 years, the wreck of the sailboat, which notably transported gold bars, rested at a depth of about fifteen meters with its precious treasures.
She was finally discovered in 1974 by a teacher.
A discovery that immediately arouses the greed of a few unscrupulous divers who loot it, notably carrying away gold bars.
Five of them were identified and tried and sentenced in 1983 in Lorient.
But part of the cargo was never found.
39 years later, the case is experiencing a final twist.
An investigation carried out jointly by the research section of the maritime gendarmerie, the central Office for the fight against trafficking in cultural property and the interministerial group of Ille-et-Vilaine, led to the indictment of three people and to the return to France by the United States of five ingots transported by the ship.
The American authorities handed them over to France during a ceremony with great pomp, at the beginning of March, in Washington.
They should now join a museum to be exhibited.
Listed on an auction site
The investigations rebounded at the end of 2017. Five gold bars were then put up for sale on an American auction site.
The specialists of the Department of Underwater and Underwater Archaeological Research have no doubts: it is indeed the ingots that were transported by the “Prince de Conty”.
A report was made in 2018 to the Brest court and a preliminary investigation was opened.
In February 2020, an investigating judge was seized and a judicial investigation opened, on charges of concealment of cultural property, money laundering in an organized gang, criminal association, and illegal export of cultural property.
The investigations quickly make it possible to identify the seller of the lot on the auction site, and another woman who had declared on American television to have discovered these ingots by chance during a dive.
Now 76, she is the sister-in-law of a 74-year-old man who was a professional diver-photographer.
At the end of the 1970s, the latter took part in numerous dives on the wreck of the “Prince de Conty”.
Now retired, he had even, for a time, been suspected of having participated in the looting of the 18th century ship before being exonerated.
Bullion on display at the British Museum
A search is carried out at the home of this man and his wife.
It allows investigators "the discovery of incriminating material clues, in particular transactions relating to the sale of ingots with an American couple", indicated the Brest prosecutor's office in a press release.
On May 17, the diver, his wife and his sister-in-law were taken into custody.
The couple "acknowledged their involvement in the recovery of the ingots and also their sale in Switzerland and the United States", explained this Wednesday the prosecutor of Brest, Camille Mansioni, during a press conference.
The sister-in-law of the main suspect, on the other hand, disputes any responsibility in this case.
All three were indicted on May 18, 2022 and placed under judicial supervision.
Investigations are continuing in order to find the trace of other ingots transported by the “Prince de Conty”.
"Major cultural establishments of international renown, in particular the British Museum, have acquired from people belonging to the identified group ingots and objects from the wreck of the Prince de Conty and still hold them", assured Camille Mansioni.
"The requests for restitution transmitted, in particular to the British Museum, have remained to this day, curiously and with regret, unsuccessful".
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Investigation
Gendarmerie
Gold
UNITED STATES
Flight
Dive
Justice