Five Colombians arrested in Luxembourg have been charged and jailed in France for the theft of medical equipment from a clinic in Nancy to the sum of about €1 million, prosecutors in the French city said on Wednesday.
The robbery occurred on 17 November at a medical institution where endoscopy equipment, “including 18 machines at €30,000 each,” was stolen, the Nancy public prosecutor's office said in a press release
The total damage was estimated “at nearly €1 million euros,” according to the prosecutor’s office.
“After exchanging information with the Belgian and Luxembourg judicial police forces,” all the material was recovered a few days later at a post office in Arlon, Belgium.
The loot was contained in four packages bound for Bogota, Colombia.
Exchanges between the French, Belgian and Luxembourg judicial police forces made it possible to identify the alleged perpetrators.
The “group of five Colombian criminals” - four men and a woman - was arrested on 24 November by Luxembourg police “at a youth hostel” in Livange, Luxembourg, according to the prosecutor's office.
Searches of their rooms allowed the police to seize “bags, suitcases and clothing used during the commission of the acts and shown on video surveillance footage,” the prosecutors said.
The Luxembourg authorities handed them over to the French judiciary on 5 December. They were then charged and remanded in custody, as part of the investigation by the Nancy prosecutor’s office, for “theft by an organised gang and criminal organisation with the intent to commit a crime.”
The judicial investigation should reveal whether the five are still to be charged with similar acts, the prosecutor’s office said.
