Irish gang’s nights at the museum netted £57m haul of precious artefacts
Senior leaders of a prolific international gang of rhinohorn thieves known as the Rathkeale Rovers have been convicted of museum raids that netted £57m. The convictions represent a major police success against a brutal criminal organisation.
Key planners from the gang – blamed for dozens of burglaries across Europe dating back to 2009 – were convicted of two smash-and-grab raids in Britain within eight days. These targeted Chinese antiquities and each landed bigger hauls than the £14m Hatton Garden safety deposit heist.
The convictions of six members of one family deal a significant blow to the Irish Traveller gang whose criminality led to a pan-European police operation and sparked demands for action from the top of the UK Government.
It can now be reported for the first time that senior planners from the Rathkeale Rovers were among 14 people convicted over roles in nine attempted or planned raids in Britain. The raids included two at Durham’s Oriental Museum and the Fitzwilliam in Cambridge: Chinese antiquities worth up to £57m were stolen. Two-thirds of the haul has never been recovered and is believed to have been shipped out of the country to Far Eastern buyers.
“If you think the Hatton Garden break-in was big, this will blow that out of the water,” said Detective Superintendent Adrian Green, who led the investigation. “Because of the variations which can be given by auction houses the total value of the items targeted comes to anywhere between £18m and £57m. This illustrates just how massively profitable this trade was.”
The gang, with strong links to the Irish town in Co Limerick from which it takes its name, has been linked to museum or auction house raids in at least 16 nations across Europe, rhino poaching in Southern Africa, and attempts to smuggle horn from the United States. At least eight of those convicted had links to the town.
Rhino horn can bring a higher profit than gold or cocaine, fuelled by strong demand from countries such as Vietnam and China, where it is prized for its supposed medicinal qualities. It has been known to command prices of around £45,000 a kilo. Investigators estimate nearly 100 rhino horns were stolen in just a few years to 2013.
The gang’s senior members – said to be from a small group of families from the nomadic community – escaped detection by remaining in the shadows while paying career criminals and the vulnerable to carry out the raids, and ensuring their silence with at times brutal violence.
Members of the extended Irish “Kerry” O’Brien family were identified through telephone data during a series of panicked calls after their hired hands “lost” a £16m haul from the Durham Oriental Museum in April 2012. After failing to find the antiquities that they stashed on waste ground on the outskirts of Durham, the gang stole 18 precious items from the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge just over a week later to fulfil an order for a jade bowl for a Far Eastern buyer. Those items, worth up to £40m, have never been recovered.
Dr Noah Charney, the founder of the Association of Research into Crimes against Art, said: “Theft on commission is largely a fictional concept – but it’s an exception when dealing with the Far East and China in particular.”
Along with the senior leadership, a Hong Kong middle-man, Chi Chong Donald Wong, who garnered orders for Far Eastern customers, and a raft of low-level criminals have also been found guilty after three trials that could not be reported until today for legal reasons. The convictions represent a rare series of victories against the gang, also believed to have been involved in fraud, fake goods, drug smuggling and violence.
With the world’s rhino population cut by 90 per cent since the 1970s, the gang focused on dead creatures in museums, which for years had failed to understand the value of their stocks before beefing up security in response to the raids. “They are a bit like banks where people can come in and touch the money,” said Supt Green.