The Hong Kong Police Force on Thursday confirmed detaining 13 people and recovering stolen gold valued at HK$59 million ($7.59 million), a day after a brazen daylight robbery at a gold processing workshop in Hung Hom.
The 13 were arrested during a two-day operation. Twelve of them are Hong Kong males aged between 29 and 60, while the other detainee is a 32-year-old female who allegedly aided her husband, one of the suspects, by withholding his whereabouts, police said in a briefing on late Thursday evening.
The remaining five are still at large.
The West Kowloon Regional Crime Unit is leading the investigation. No injuries were reported.
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Police said the stolen goods have been fully recovered.
The robbery may stem from a business dispute among partners, according to police.
The incident took place at 5:50 am on Wednesday when a group of 17 men arrived at the gold workshop at the Fu Hang Industrial Building and demanded that the three staff members at the scene stay in one of the rooms.
The intruders then stole 65 kilograms of gold and around HK$20,000 in cash. The staff members then contacted their employer and alerted the police.
Some of the suspects are believed to have triad backgrounds.
The woman was later released on bail. She must report to the police in mid-October.
Police believe the woman was the wife of a previous partner of the factory. The man, mastermind of the heist, is still on the run.
Terming the incident as extremely serious, police said it may involve commercial disputes among business partners. It is also possible that one of the wanted is a former partner of the workshop, who was responsible for stealing the gold, while the remaining 16 men were there to control the situation, said police.
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In two separate incidents that highlight global targeting of valuable gold items, thieves broke into a gallery of France’s National Museum of Natural History in Paris on Tuesday before fleeing with nuggets of raw gold worth an estimated $700,000.
On Wednesday, a 3,000-year-old pharaoh’s golden bracelet from the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, which was scheduled to be lent to a museum in Rome, Italy, for an exhibition, disappeared from a safe in the museum’s restoration laboratory.
Contact the writer at lilei@chinadailyhk.com
