Four Men Charged in England for Stealing Gold Toilet Worth Nearly $6 Million From Winston Churchill's Mansion
Four men were charged in the United Kingdom on Monday with stealing an 18-carat gold toilet from Blenheim Palace, the grand English mansion where British military leader Winston Churchill was born, Insider reports.
The golden toilet, called "America," was meant to be a sharp satire on excessive wealth. The exhibit was valued at £4.8 million ($5.95 million).
It was part of an art installation at Blenheim Palace near Oxford before it was stolen overnight in September 2019 and was the work of Italian conceptual artist Maurizio Cattelan.
The Crown Prosecution Service said on Monday that it had authorised criminal charges against four men aged 35-39 for the theft. They are charged with robbery and conspiracy to transfer stolen property.
The toilet was working as intended and was connected to the sewerage system. Prior to the theft, visitors to the exhibition could sign up for three minutes to use the toilet.
After the theft, police reported that because the toilet was connected to the palace's water system, its theft caused "significant damage and flooding" to the ancient building, which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and was filled with valuable art and furniture that attracts thousands of visitors each year.
The work of art has never been found.
The Guggenheim Museum in New York, which housed the art installation before it was shown at Blenheim Palace, described the toilet as "cast in 18-carat gold".
As The Gaze previously reported, the unique Ukrainian collection of Scythian Gold, which has been blocked for almost 9 years in the Allard Pearson Museum in the Netherlands due to lawsuits filed by Russia, will finally be returned to Ukraine and stored in the National Museum of History of Ukraine.
As a reminder, in October, Spain returned to Ukraine a part of the stolen Scythian gold - ancient Scythian jewellery worth 60 million euros. Spanish investigators arrested five people, three of whom are Spanish citizens and two are Ukrainian citizens, effectively dismantling a criminal network aimed at smuggling stolen cultural property from Ukraine.