The prosecutor of the Republic of Brest Camille Miansoni announced Wednesday the indictment on May 18 of three French people for the theft and concealment of five gold bars from this wreck.

An American couple, linked to the three respondents, has also been identified by the investigators.

The ingots, worth some 230,000 US dollars (220,000 euros), appeared in the catalog of a Californian auction house, which planned to put them up for auction in early 2018. Alerted by France, the American authorities had them seized and returned to Paris, during a ceremony organized in March in Washington.

The suspects, a couple and a woman, all three of French nationality, have been placed under judicial supervision and face up to 15 years of criminal imprisonment, said Mr. Miansoni, during a press conference, adding that the instruction was continuing because looted items were still found abroad.

"Major cultural establishments of international renown, in particular the British Museum, acquired from people belonging to the identified group - and still held them - ingots and objects from the wreck of the Prince de Conty", assured M. Miansoni, whose jurisdiction specializes in coastal cases (Julis).

“The requests for restitution transmitted, in particular to the British Museum, remained to this day, curiously and with regret, unsuccessful,” he added.

The public prosecutor of Brest Camille Miansoni in front of the city court on July 2, 2021 JEAN-FRANCOIS MONIER AFP / Archives

The British Museum is already at odds with Greece over marbles from the Parthenon of the Acropolis in Athens, which the country has been asking for for many years to be returned.

Chance of the calendar, the prestigious museum said Wednesday open to an agreement with Athens.

Chinese ingots

International letters rogatory have been sent to Great Britain, but also to the United States and Switzerland as part of the investigation opened in February 2020 in Brest.

While in police custody, the couple admitted their involvement "in the recovery of the ingots and also their sale in Switzerland and the United States", while the woman denied any involvement, according to the prosecutor.

The man indicted is a former professional diver-photographer already suspected, but exonerated, in a trial held in November 1983 in Lorient in a case of looting of the same wreck.

Returning from the Far East, the Prince de Conty was shipwrecked on December 3, 1746 by a stormy and foggy night, near Belle-Ile-en-Mer (Morbihan).

Of the 229 men on board, only 45 survived.

Immersed in 10 to 15 meters deep, in an area of ​​strong currents and particularly difficult to access, the wreck had fallen into oblivion until its discovery in 1974 by a teacher.

It was then looted, before a professional expertise which observed thousands of fragments of Chinese porcelain from the reign of Emperor Qianlong (1736-1795), remains of tea crates and three small Chinese gold ingots.

The five ingots were officially returned to Brest on Wednesday, along with some fragments of porcelain objects also from the Prince of Conty, to the Department of Underwater and Underwater Archaeological Research (Drassm), the service responsible for inventorying the immersed heritage in France.

Five ingots were officially returned to Brest on June 15, 2022, as well as fragments of porcelain objects also from the Prince of Conty, to the Department of Underwater and Underwater Archaeological Research Sandra FERRER AFP

"Today, that we have these remains which enter public collections is a real satisfaction", reacted Olivia Hulot, maritime archaeologist at Drassm.

"The ships of the Compagnie des Indes are a special page in our maritime history", she underlined, specifying that the remains of only one of them, the Prince de Conty, had been found for hour along the French coast.

The restored ingots are decorated for some of Chinese ideograms symbolizing prosperity.

They were used as currency by China to buy goods from France.

© 2022 AFP