The stolen gold toilet was worth £2.8 million in gold alone (Image: Getty)
A £2.8 million gold toilet was stolen from a UK palace in just five minutes, a court has heard.
Entitled America, the 18-carat gold toilet was part of an exhibition by Italian conceptual artist Maurizio Cattelan. It was at Blenheim Palace in September 2019.
Oxford Crown Court was told that a gang of five people drove through the locked palace gates in the early hours of the morning and broke into the building with sledgehammers.
One of the defendants Michael Jones is alleged to have taken a photo of the toilet about 17 hours before it was stolen. Prosecutor Julian Christopher said Jones had taken it while he was “there as part of the reconnaissance for the burglary”.
Mr Christopher said: “The burglary was carefully planned and swiftly carried out.
“The men, five of them it appears, drove through locked wooden gates into the grounds of Blenheim Palace shortly before 5am in two stolen vehicles, an Isuzu truck and a VW Golf.
A gold toilet was stolen from Blenheim Palace in September 2019 (Image: Getty)
“They drove across a field, up to the front steps and smashed and broke in through a window. They knew precisely where to go, broke down the wooden door to the cubicle where the toilet was fully plumbed in, removed it, leaving water pouring out of the pipes, and drove away.
“Clearly such an audacious raid would not have been possible without lots of preparation.”
Mr Christopher told the court the raid took just five minutes: “The work of art was never recovered. It appears to have been split up into smaller amounts of gold and never recovered.”
Within days of the raid, it is alleged two of the men were using “car” as a codeword for the stolen gold and contact was made with a jeweller.
The toilet weighed 98kg and was insured for £4.75 million. At the time, gold prices would have made the gold alone worth £2.8 million.
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Michael Jones, 39, from Divinity Road, Oxford denies a charge of burglary. Fred Doe, previously known as Frederick Sines, 36, from Windsor, and 41-year-old Bora Guccuk, from west London have pleaded not guilty to conspiring to transfer criminal property.
James Sheen, 40, from Wellingborough in Northamptonshire, pleaded guilty to burglary, transferring criminal property and conspiracy to do the same in April 2024.
Messages, voice notes and screengrabs on Sheen, Doe and Guccuk’s phones showed the trio negotiated a price of £25,632 per kilo for around 20kg of the stolen gold – £512,640, the court heard.
Prosecutors claimed that Guccuk, who ran the jewellers Pacha of London in Hatton Garden, would make a profit of about £3,000 for every kilo he sold.
Blenheim Palace is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and was the birthplace of Sir Winston Churchill.
The trial continues.