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Reposted from Artnet
A protest at New York’s Whitney Museum of American Art saw the fire department called to the scene yesterday. The museum’s lobby was filled with smoke from demonstrators burning sage, a symbolic action meant to mirror the toxic tear gas used on November 25 against asylum seeks attempting to enter the US from Mexico.
The protest began at noon on Sunday and included speeches, chanting, and music. “Against the toxic clouds produced by Safariland, we burn sage. Smoke that protects and heals, smoke that remembers and honors, smoke that chokes the powerful but smells sweet to us as we assemble for freedom and dignity,” wrote Decolonize This Place in a statement prepared ahead of the action.
The protest is the most visible and public demonstration to date in an ongoing debate over the presence of Warren B. Kanders, the owner of the company Safariland, on the museum’s board. The flurry of discussion and criticism began on November 27, when an article on Hyperallergic publicized the ties between Kanders, the Whitney’s board vice chair, and Safariland, which manufactured the tear gas used by United States Customs and Border Protection officers on migrant mothers and children at the San Diego-Tijuana border. Kanders has served as Safariland’s board chairman since 1996 and owner since 2012.
The Sunday demonstration against Kanders’s continued presence on the institution’s board, led by the activist group Decolonize This Place, was held in conjunction with a coalition of other New York City groups. It is one of a growing number of protests drawing attention to unsavory sources of museum funding, from photographer Nan Goldin‘s campaign against museums that accept funding from the Sackler family to environmentalists’ demonstrations against museums funded by BP and other oil companies.
This wasn’t the only protest against Kanders targeting the Whitney this week, either. A second, unaffiliated protest action took place on Monday morning, led by artist Rafael Shimunov. Together with the group Art V War, he created a guerrilla-style installation of a painting based on a photo taken at the border last month of a mother and her two young children running from tear gas.
He labeled the work, Mother and her daughters in tear gas (2018) and credited “Whitney Vice Chair, Warren Kanders in collaboration with Trump” as the artist. The artist posted footage of himself installing the work and an accompanying label on a wall on the east side of the Whitney’s galleries earlier today. Shimunov has also launched a Color of Change petition calling for Kanders’s resignation.
The protesters noted that they were acting separately, but in solidarity with, the staff of the Whitney Museum. Around a week and a half ago, nearly 100 museum employees wrote a letter calling for Kanders to be removed from the board and for the museum to release a statement acknowledging the issue. (Kanders is also a “significant contributor” to the Whitney’s “Andy Warhol: From A to B and Back Again,” according to the exhibition credits.)
In addition to handmade posters carried by demonstrators, the Sunday protest also included imagery in the style of Warhol’s art and museum publicity materials, created by Decolonize This Place and the collective MTL+.
Mimicking the Pop art great’s multicolored screen prints, the artworks feature rows of tear gas canisters (instead of Campbell’s soup), and photographs of activists being gassed at Standing Rock and of Weinberg and Kanders smiling at a museum gala.
“The immediate goal is that Warren Kanders must go,” Marz Saffore, a member of Decolonize This Place, told Hyperallergic, adding that even if that happens, there are still “dozens and dozens of other issues within the board of trustees at the Whitney.”
Following the firefighters’ arrival, the protest moved outside and continued peacefully, with flyers explaining the situation being handed out to museum visitors and passersby. Banners reading “WHITNEY MUSEUM: NO SPACE FOR PROFITEER OF STATE VIOLENCE” amplified the message.
“Museum visitors seemed to be equally divided along lines of befuddled incomprehension and genuine curiosity about the protest,” said artist William Powhida, who participated in the demonstration. “I was approached a few times to answer peoples’ questions and it seemed to me that there is very little public awareness about who Warren B. Kanders is and what his company, Safariland, does.”
In response to the uproar last week, museum director Adam Weinberg issued a letter reiterating what he views as the museum’s role as a bastion of progressive art, a place for open discussion about difficult subjects, and a venue where underrepresented voices can be heard. In the letter, which did not mention Kanders by name, Weinberg also noted that “trustees do not hire staff, select exhibitions, organize programs or make acquisitions, and staff does not appoint or remove board members.”
Soon after, the embattled vice chair himself issued a statement noting that he had no control over how Safariland products were deployed. “I think it is clear that I am not the problem the authors of the letter seek to solve,” Kanders wrote.
Weinberg’s “tepid response to the staff letter” was a big reason Powhida decided to take part in the protest, he said. “The Whitney is one of the most visible contemporary arts museums in the country and I don’t think it should be used—as an institution that is seeking to represent diversity—to art wash or launder the reputation of Kanders,” he told artnet News in an email. “If an artist has a platform and an audience, I think we have a responsibility to amplify messages of groups like Decolonize This Place.”
It appears the group’s campaign is far from over. “We do not do one-offs,” Decolonize This Place told artnet News in a Facebook message. “But we are also waiting to hear how the Whitney will respond after our action, and whether they will remove Warren B. Kanders.”
As of press time, the Whitney had not responded to Artnet News’s request for comment.
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Reposted from The Local (Fr)
Forty metro stations will be shut on Saturday and numerous museums and monuments won't be open to the public, but Paris City Hall insists tourists have nothing to fear.
Paris and other cities around France are braced for more yellow vest protests tomorrow.
Last Saturday's protests prompted the city to practically close down for the day with scores of cultural sites including the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre deciding to close fearing violence.
Sites that have confirmed they will be closed on Saturday include the Petit Palais, Musée d’Art Moderne, Musée Cernuschi, Catacombs and Théâtre des Champs Elysée.
The Arc de Triomphe and the Pantheon will also be closed.
Paris City Hall tried to ease the fears of any visitors but advised them to avoid certain areas and keep up to date with the news.
"This social protest movement represents no danger to visitors," a statement on the website said.
"It will however cause some inconvenience with the exceptional closing of certain museums and monuments, as well as that of some public transport stations.
"In anticipation of a new demonstration on Saturday 15 December, we recommend that you keep up to date with the situation via our Twitter account Paris Je T'aime, and that you stay outside the perimeter of the processions in order to avoid any uncomfortable situations."
Police have stated that from 6 am onward there will also be an exclusion zone in place around Place de la Concorde, the Champs Elysée, the Assemblée National, Place Beauvau and Hotêl Matignon.
So far the Louvre, Orangerie, Musée d’Orsay and Eiffel Tower have not said they will change their opening hours so should be open as normal tomorrow.
The Grand Palais will also be open, but only to visitors who have bought tickets in advance.
The Palais Garnier and Opéra Bastille also plan to open, although Opéra de Paris advises anyone planning to visit to keep an eye on their Twitter feed for up to date news, and to double check transport routes as many stations around the capital will be closed.
Tourists and residents looking to use the French capital’s underground on Saturday should expect some travel grief caused by both works on the line and temporary closures due to the ‘yellow vest’ protests expected to rock the Paris city centre again this Saturday According to the city's RATP transport network, 40 stations will remain closed.
Line 1 (Tuileries, Concorde, Champs-Elysees Clemenceau, Franklin D. Roosevelt, George V, Charles de Gaulle-Etoile, Argentine) and Line 9 (Franklin D. Roosevelt, Trocadero, Miromesnil, St. Philip du Roule ) will be particularly affected.
Other lines that can expect delays are Line 2 (Charles de Gaulle-Etoile), Line 6 (Charles de Gaulle Etoile, Kleber, Boissiere, Trocadero), Line 8 (Concorde, Madeleine), Line 12(Concorde, Assemblée Nationale, Madeleine), line 13 (Champs-Elysees Clemenceau, Miromesnil, St. Francis Xavier, Varenne, Invalides) and line 14 (Madeleine).
The RER C train line running from the northwest to the southeast of the city through the centre of Paris is also forecast to suffer closures (Invalides, Avenue Foch, Porte Maillot and Pont de l'Alma Charles de Gaulle Etoile RER) .
Buses are also best avoided the RATP warns, as routes are "likely to be deviated, limited or not run at all".
Most Vélib bike sharing stations across the city will also be closed, with the exception of the 18th, 19th and 20th arrondissements.
Reposted from Allied Universal
Business owners and managers have openly expressed concerns regarding property crime and physical damage to buildings and corporate campuses. Rightly so, as the 2017 Freedonia Report states that property crime accounted for 87 percent of all reported crimes in the U.S. in 2015.
Graffiti, broken windows and doors, theft and property defacement are not only unsightly and a nuisance, but also create fear and unease in employees and visitors. Often times, areas with property crime also experience personal theft.
Property and personal crimes can have a ripple effect, impacting neighboring businesses and buildings, inviting criminal activity, decreasing property value and business traffic, and having an overall impact on brand reputation.
Unfortunately, every business or public agency is vulnerable to property crime, but working with your security provider to implement the following three steps, you will be better prepared to protect your assets:
Is your business located in a high-crime area?
Are neighboring businesses having similar issues?
Does your business or building take part in controversial issues?
Does your business have a variety of guests/employees?
Do you lack physical barriers?
Increase security patrols.
Update lighting, barriers and landscaping.
Integrate your physical security presence with technology solutions.
Utilize access control measures.
Develop preventive measures for deterring vandals and thieves.
Involve the community and neighboring businesses in your planning.
Promptly communicate issues to law enforcement.
Track crime trends.
Make the commitment to prevent property crime before your business is adversely impacted. Above and beyond the occasional graffiti and petty theft, these criminal activity can escalate quickly and impact the entire community.
In less than four months, a multitude of fans, tourists and media will descend upon Atlanta for Super Bowl LIII. Whether your event is a major sports event or a Fortune 500 meeting, your business, wherever it is located, needs to be prepared with the right security measures and staff to go the distance to your goal line! By employing the best security practices, you’ll ensure the safety of your guests and staff and prevent damage to the venue.
Also, event security needs to work closely with the local police department because every event experience is unique and it’s important to establish priorities for a variety of emergency scenarios.
Reposted from Hyperallergic
On the morning of Friday, November 30, a group of community members gathered at the RISD Museum to pressure the institution to carry out measures to decolonize by restituting stolen artifacts. The demonstration was led by students, faculty, and staff from Brown University and the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), as well as members of the local community.
The group flooded the front entrance of the museum and announced their call to action, leading with the chant, “Heads up, RISD!” Demonstrators distributed letterpress posters which read, “Heads Up RISD. Decolonization, or Complicity? RISD, you have a decision to make.” The poster also featured an image of the main object in question at today’s demonstration: a bronze sculpture from the Kingdom of Benin.
The RISD Museum’s possession of this artifact, one of the thousands that have been displaced all over the world, can be traced back directly to violent colonial conquest. During the Punitive Expedition of 1897, British colonists captured and plundered Benin City. They looted and relocated its artworks to Britain, and quickly traded these artifacts to Western markets. Restitution of Benin bronzes has been highlighted in recent global news, most notably by the Bénédicte Savoy and Felwine Sarr report which was released earlier this year. Just last week, the French government agreed to begin a process of complete restitution of artifacts stolen from the African continent. The RISD Museum’s possession of this Benin bronze, brought demonstrators in Providence, Rhode Island today, to call for the same action.
Virginia Thomas, a PhD candidate at Brown, introduced the action with an acknowledgement that the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations (the state’s official name) is home to RISD, an institution which occupies Mosshassuck land (shared by Nahaganset, Pokanoket, Nipmuc, and Peqout tribal nations) and that the RISD Museum “must account for the ways in which the institution, and we as community members, continue to benefit from the dispossession of Mosshassuck from Indigenous peoples.”
She further announced this assembly as a call-in for the museum to decolonize without delay, and addressed the intersections at which decolonization would take place: “It is with this anti-imperialist orientation and alignment with struggles for Indigenous lands and objects, Black liberation, and a free Palestine that we desire for the RISD Museum to hear our call to disown the Benin bronze from its collections.”
The Museum told Hyperallergic in an email following today’s action:
“The RISD Museum recognizes the looted status of the Head of a King (Oba) made by Benin royal artists in West Africa which was given to the collection in 1939. British forces sacked the Benin kingdom in 1897 in a campaign known as the Benin Punitive Expedition. Cities were burned; the reigning king, Oba Ovonranwmen, was forced into exile; and works of art and other treasures were looted. Soon after, museums and individuals throughout Europe and the United States were collecting Benin bronzes. We have initiated a process of communication with Oba Ewuare II and the National Commission for Museums and Monuments in Nigeria which has been established to address this very issue. We see this as an opportunity to confront the histories of colonialism that exist within museum collections.”
While the museum administration is working toward decolonization, the constituency has felt disconnected from the process and was unaware of the updates before today’s action.
Ariella Azoulay, professor of Comparative Literature and Modern Culture and Media at Brown, was one of the several speakers at today’s demonstration. She recognized the problem at an institutional level and called on individuals with ties to the RISD Museum to support the cause for restitution:
“The Sarr & Savoy report empowers us in this demand to disown these objects … in the process of undoing colonial geographies and violence … [The report] is the proof that museum workers have the right and are capable of not incorporating, as their own, the voice of the institutions in which they work. They also have the power to leave behind and detach themselves from the institutional persona that they inhabit. The report … is the ultimate proof that those who work in museums can introduce a distance between themselves and a voice of the institution. We are here to remind museum workers that while speaking the voice of the institution, they continue to perpetuate its imperial violence.”
“Stolen land, stolen people, stolen art,” proclaimed a chant led by a postdoctoral scholar at Brown, Christopher, who requested his last name be omitted. Christopher notes that they are not the first to do this, they are just lending their voices to the movement. We are “doing our part to push forward our practices of accountability,” he says.
Individuals in the group took turns reading aloud their collective message. They make it clear that they “are not acting as the messenger of existing restitution claims,” and that they are acting “in solidarity with the communities who claim [restitution] by calling for a decolonial approach that goes to the root of the museum’s institutional culture.” Repeating the individual speakers before them, the group demands the museum to willingly “embrace new modes of accountability” and that “RISD respect[s] and respond[s] to these claims with no delay.” A list of demands was also announced. They can be found online.
After the speakers were finished, the group called in the audience to join them in delivering a letter to John Smith, the museum director. They chanted, “Heads up, RISD” as they marched through the modern wing of the museum and to the narrow hallway where the administrative offices are located. After the letter was received, RISD administration told the demonstrators that they have already begun the restitution process and have communicated with the Nigerian government. The RISD Museum will report back in a couple of weeks.
Reposted from The Art Newspaper
The process of art attribution has recently come under attack from all sides. Forgery scandals seem to be rampant. Just months after a German court convicted Wolfgang Beltracchi for faking the work of such artists as Heinrich Campendonk, Max Ernst and Max Pechstein, one of America’s oldest galleries, Knoedler, ceased operations due to allegations that it had sold paintings falsely attributed to some of the leading Abstract Expressionists. This past January, a Modigliani exhibition at the Palazzo Ducale in Genoa was forced to close early when it was revealed that nearly all the works were fakes. At the same time, fear of litigation has caused foundations representing Jean-Michel Basquiat, Alexander Calder, Keith Haring, Lee Krasner, Roy Lichtenstein, Jackson Pollock and Andy Warhol to dissolve their authentication boards. Just when we need them most, art experts find themselves increasingly on the defensive.
However, the apparent authentication crisis is not nearly so widespread as the aforementioned widely publicized cases might lead one to believe. Most forgeries enter the market at the bottom of the food chain: through flea markets, thrift shops and internet sites like eBay. These low-cost fakes are usually identified before they can enter the high-end art market. Very few forgers have the talent to create original compositions similar enough in style to a famous artist that they fool even moderately informed people, let alone experts.
However, as the Beltrachi and Knoedler cases demonstrate, the stakes can be enormous when a forger manages to breach the art world’s established defenses. The conservation scientist James Martin, who unmasked the Knoedler fakes by proving the paintings were created with anachronistic, atypical materials, likes to compare the authentication process to a three-legged stool of connoisseurship, technical analysis and provenance. As works are systematically examined and cataloged, the stylistic nuances of individual artists become clear, and patterns of ownership also make themselves known.
While helpful in addition to the physical evidence presented by a work of art, provenance alone is not sufficient to authenticate a work as histories are readily fabricated, and many prominent collectors have owned fakes. Similarly, the identification of pigments unknown during an artist’s lifetime may be used to expose a forgery but the presence of historically appropriate materials does not necessarily prove authenticity. While scientific testing and provenance are important, connoisseurship is the glue that binds everything together.
Art authentication is not, and probably never will be, an exact science. This does not mean that the experts who make such judgments are incompetent or capricious. Nevertheless, we live in a world of “alternative facts”, in which everyone’s opinion is deemed equally valid, and anyone can find an “authority” to say whatever he or she wants. The current authentication crisis arises from a confluence of populist anger at the very notion of expertise, the inherent subjectivity of the authentication process, and dizzying art prices.
Reposted from the Natural History Museum
In times of war, the Museum defiantly stayed open for as long as it could, its grounds were converted to community allotments and resident scientists put their minds to keeping troops and allies alive on foreign soil.
During the Second World War a number of the Museum's galleries were commandeered to provide tools and training for British secret spy networks.
The Museum remained open to the public throughout the First World War, sharing knowledge to help the home front. Displays were created covering gardening, pest control and foraging.
As food shortages took their toll, carrier pigeons relaying military communications and life-saving messages from downed pilots sometimes ended up shot for pigeon pie.
A display of types of pigeons was created to help those at home tell the difference between ordinary wood pigeons, rock doves, stock doves and their carrier pigeon cousins
In 1910 the Museum received a request from the War Office. A batch of army biscuits - a staple of the military diet - which had been sent to troops in South Africa and Mauritius had been infested with moths and become inedible despite being transported in hermetically sealed jars.
John Hartley Durrant of the Zoology department was asked to investigate. He concluded that eggs must have been laid at some point between baking and packing the biscuits, with larvae developing later inside the sealed tins
During the First World War, British forces used over one million horses and mules to pull heavy machinery, carry supplies and provide transport.
This proved essential for the war effort. In 1914, Lieutenant Colonel E Lloyd Williams of the 2nd London Division applied for permission for his men to visit the Museum and study the anatomy of horse specimens on display. Today, visitors can still see one of these specimens in the Mammals gallery.
A British spy network called the Special Operations Executive (SOE) was formed in 1940 as a secret service under the aegis of the Minister of Economic Warfare.
Under the cover name Inter-Services Research Bureau, its mission was 'to aid and encourage all resistance to the enemy in occupied territories'.
Unbeknown to the public, the SOE sealed off several galleries to create a workshop and top secret demonstration room. Plasterers and carpenters prepared materials for agents in the field in a workshop at the north end of what is now the Jerwood Gallery.
One of the most curious weapons offered to agents in the catalogue of special devices and supplies was an exploding rat - literally, a rat skin filled with explosives.
See Original Post and see fantastic photographs!
IFCPP held its 19th Annual Conference, Seminar, & Exhibits October 13-17th in beautiful San Simeon, California. Rob and Steve Layne and their extraordinary staff provided fun activities outside of the conference schedule, including wine tasting at the Heart Ranch Winery and Paso Robles vineyards, networking meals, a paint party at the Cambria Pine Lodge, and tours of the Hearst Castle in San Simeon. The pre-conference program focused on library security and included discussions of how best to protect libraries from theft and vandalism, creating marks of ownership for special collections materials, effects of fire extinguishing agents on library and archive collections, state laws regarding ejecting disruptive patrons, and balancing access and security in library special collections. The conference program was equally rich in content: drones as an emerging threat vector, fine art insurance, Detroit Institute of Art case study in emergency planning, fire suppression systems for cultural properties, security system monitoring and evaluation, customer service, conflict resolution, collaborative collection protection, role of security in slip and fall accidents, and special event security considerations.
The highlight of the conference was the vulnerability assessment exercise performed at the Hearst Castle. District Superintendent for the California State Parks San Luis Obispo District James Grennan, our conference host, assigned attendees to four groups that would explore four of the site’s essential functions: security, fire safety, collections, and IT. Each group spent about 20 minutes with senior Hearst Castle staff who walked each group through the grounds, castle, and houses, as well as some behind-the-scenes such as the Security Command Center, the fire station, and the collections preparation and storage area. Each staff member also discussed their daily routines, concerns, and visions for improving all operational aspects. Attendees met the next day to perform a “hot wash,” led by Mr. Grennan, who discussed the feasibility of several suggestions that were offered. Such exercises are a boon to both conference attendees as well as the host because, a) they are a great way to explore how different cultural properties deploy security, fire, and emergency management best practices, b) they provide a forum to discuss how to improve existing security programs, and c) the host gets to have a fresh set of eyes review its security program.
The IFCPP is currently planning where to celebrate its 20th conference. This excellent program is unique because it focuses solely on cultural property protection and attendees all work for or with cultural properties, which makes for engaging conversation and networking.
Robert Carotenuto, CIPM, CPP, PCI, PSP, AVP, Security The New York Botanical Garden
Reposted from Workplace Insight
Workers are increasingly introducing technology devices, software and other tools into the workplace without their employer’s approval, claims a new report from NextPlane that examines the extent of this growing rift and its impact on collaboration and productivity. Nearly half of professionals (46 percent) said they or their team have introduced new technology into their workplace, and despite IT attempts to remain in control, workers are not standing down, as 53 percent said they or another team have pushed back on IT or management when they tried to dictate the technology they use.
The report also shows that 73 percent of workers say they’ve been successful in implementing their choice of tech tools. The result is growing tension between IT departments who want to remain in control of security and systems, and employees who want the freedom to choose the technologies they use to do their jobs, and are willing to go around IT to do it.
This growing tech loyalty is leading to business professionals seeking out new tools and technology to not just do their own jobs better, but to help their teams collaborate more effectively. The majority of respondents (63 percent) expressed loyalty to the technology products they use for their job. And it doesn’t stop on an individual level — 42 percent of teams have loyalty to technology products, leading to pushback or straying from policy if the IT-mandated tools don’t mesh with established workflows.
“IT and business professionals are struggling to find common ground when it comes to the technology used at work,” said Farzin Shahidi, CEO of NextPlane. “Legions of teams and workers are introducing their preferred tools, such as team collaboration tools like Slack and Workplace, despite corporate IT policy. This increasing lack of compliance threatens not only the productivity of employees that may be working across different platforms, but the control that IT requires to manage all of a company’s technology securely and efficiently.”
More than one-third (38 percent) of respondents said they would be resistant to IT or management dictating which software or tools they use to do their jobs. This reflects the notion that individuals and teams believe they know how to do their jobs best and should have a say in the tools they use to do their work. In many cases, teams prevail in pushing back on IT to allow their group to use technology of their choice, with 46 percent saying IT made an exception for their team.
Continued Shahidi: “While there are no one-size-fits-all options for all types of technology employees might bring into the workplace, federation is one possible solution that can allow companies to deploy a comprehensive and open collaboration strategy that allows multiple collaboration tools to be used within the same organization,” Shahidi said.
Reposted from Xinhuanet
A formal indictment by state prosecutors has provided the first details of one of the biggest gold heists in German history, the newspaper BILD reported on Thursday.
BILD cited a 68-page-long document listing charges against four individuals who are believed to have stolen the "Big Maple Leaf" gold coin from the Bode-Museum in Berlin in March 2017.
The coin weighs 100 kilograms and is valued at 3.75 million euros, a circumstance which has previously fueled wild media speculation as to how the suspected robbers managed remove it successfully from the exhibition space.
According to the indictment, the heist was a collusion between three members of the notorious Remmo organized crime family in Berlin and Denis W., a security officer working at the museum who acted as their accomplice. Prosecutors believe that the burglars obtained crucial information about the layout of the museum in this fashion, as well as weaknesses in its security infrastructure.
On March 27, 2017, the three Remmo family members placed a ladder against a window of the museum at 3:20 am which had been tampered with beforehand by the accomplice to enable them to break it open easily. From there, the burglars climbed into a changing room located just a few meters away from the cabinet displaying the "Big Maple Leaf". The entry was timed to coincide with a round of the duty security officer in the museum at the time, meaning that the automatic alarm system was on standby.
Having arrived at the display of the massive gold coin with a 53-cm diameter, the three men shattered the glass and lifted the "Big Maple Leaf" back into the changing room where it was hurled out of the museum window onto the tracks of a nearby railway line. They then exited the building and crossed the Spree river flowing outside the Bode-Museum on a railway bridge before escaping with their valuable bounty in a getaway vehicle.
Initially, investigators had few clues as to the identity of the robbers aside from video footage of three hooded individuals from a surveillance camera. However, three undercover policemen independently responded to a call for related information that the heist could be linked to the Remmo clan, a finding which was later confirmed by a DNA analysis of the ladder, ropes, adhesives and parts of an axe left at the scene of the crime.
After the tip-off, police began to surveil the three Remmo men and their accomplice on a running basis. They soon discovered that Denis W. had undergone a remarkable transformation in his standard of living, attempting to purchase a luxury vehicle and spending 11,000 euros for a gold chain in cash amongst others.
The four suspects were arrested by specialized police forces on July 12 last year who discovered gold traces with a purity of 99.999 percent, the same level as that of the "Big Maple Leaf" on their clothing and a Mercedes-Benz vehicle. The coin itself has never been found and is believed to have been broken up into little pieces and sold on.
The four suspects, all of which are registered as unemployed, are currently not in police custody after being released again on bail. There is still no official date for the start of a court trial of the alleged thieves who face up to ten years in prison for their involvement in the heist.
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