Diamond necklace worth €3.7m stolen from Vienna's MAK
Two unknown men stole a Van Cleef & Arpels diamond necklace from the Museum of Applied Arts in Vienna during opening hours. The piece of jewellery once belonged to Egyptian Queen Nasli.
Museum heist: royal neck ornament with 673 diamonds taken
During visiting hours, two unknown men smashed a display case at Vienna's Museum of Applied Arts (MAK) and stole a diamond necklace by the Paris luxury jeweller Van Cleef & Arpels. This is reported by n-tv, citing the police. The perpetrators subsequently fled with the stolen goods.
According to the MAK website, the stolen piece is a royal neck ornament featuring 673 diamonds and weighing more than 200 carats. At an auction in New York in 2015, the necklace achieved just under 4.3 million dollars — approximately 3.7 million euros — according to the database of the auction house Sotheby's.
The MAK confirmed in a brief statement only that a theft had occurred as part of the ongoing jewellery exhibition. There were no injuries. The museum declined to comment further on the investigation.
The necklace was part of the exhibition "Glanzstücke" (Jewels of Splendour), in which the MAK has been displaying more than 300 objects from the Van Cleef & Arpels collection since early June. According to the description on the museum's website, the piece of jewellery once belonged to Queen Nasli of Egypt. She wore it in 1939 at the wedding of her daughter Fausia to the then Iranian Crown Prince Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who became Shah shortly afterwards.
In police wanted photographs, two inconspicuously dressed suspects in dark clothing can be seen inside the museum. Criminal investigators are pursuing the case with high intensity, according to their own statements. In the evening, numerous police officers were deployed in front of and inside the museum.
Source: n-tv