Riding the wind of rebirth

Chapter 1494 Case

Qingtong Dun was mysteriously stolen. The museum immediately reported the case, and the provincial police immediately dispatched to the scene to investigate.

After investigation, it was found that the entire Qu Yuan Memorial Hall had not been significantly damaged. Except for the counter where the exhibits were displayed, there was almost no damage.

The police then concluded that an insider might have committed the crime.

Immediately afterwards, the staff were investigated, from the staff on duty to the commentators, all were questioned, but the conclusion was that no one had time to commit the crime.

So the police started investigating tourists entering and leaving the memorial hall.

In an era without surveillance and identity collection, and with such a huge daily traffic in an exhibition hall, investigating tourists is not an easy task.

The identity of tourists is also very complicated. There are locals, out-of-towners, and even foreigners. It is almost impossible to target tourists based on ticket inspection information.

The clues were interrupted and the case reached a deadlock.

Theft of cultural relics is different from general theft cases. Qingtongdu is a nationally protected cultural relic. The theft of a cultural relic is not just a loss of money, but a loss of national history.

The case remained unresolved for a long time, and superior leaders began to urge the case. For a time, the provincial public security faced increasing pressure.

In order to solve the case as soon as possible, the provincial bureau organized a task force and sent dozens of capable people to the scene to conduct another investigation. By comparing the damage marks on the display cabinets, the task force finally found another small clue.

During the second inspection, it was found that the door lock was forced open with a hard object. Judging from the traces, the crime tool was most likely a pipe wrench.

But not to mention the whole country, even the number of manufacturers that can produce pipe wrenches in Hubei Province is very small. It is basically impossible to check from the factory.

In addition, no traces of the crime were found in the memorial hall. Apart from the tools used to commit the crime, the task force found nothing.

So everyone’s thoughts turned to tracking down the cultural relics’ changing hands. After the cultural relics were stolen, the task force set up a dragnet around the memorial hall. The streets around the memorial hall were also covered with informants. They would conduct patrols every few hours. Look for any suspicious persons.

At the same time, defenses were deployed at major railway stations.

After five months of surveillance, I never saw anyone acting suspiciously, and the hope of recovering the cultural relics became increasingly slim.

Just when everyone was about to despair, the case suddenly took a huge turn!

It was also great luck that Mr. Tan Weisi, the director of the Hubei Provincial Museum who was on academic exchange in the United States, was also very concerned about the case of the missing national treasure. As a result, during a work exchange, he heard from a friend that Sotheby's Auction House was about to auction a pair of The Tongdun, valued at US$200,000, is very similar to the cultural relics unearthed in Suizhou, Hubei Province.

Cultural relics from the Eastern Zhou Dynasty should not appear in the United States at all, not to mention that there were only such a pair of bronze coins in the whole of China at that time, and there were no reports of cultural relics being stolen in Suizhou. The only possibility is that the copper coins are about to be auctioned by Sotheby's. Dun is the pair that was stolen from Qu Yuan Memorial Hall in Zigui!

Mr. Tan immediately reported the matter to the Hubei Provincial Department of Culture.

The state immediately sent experts to inspect, and sure enough, the cultural relics at the auction were the only ones from the Qu Yuan Memorial Hall!

After finding out the whereabouts of Qingtong, the Hubei Province police were very excited. In their minds, the most important issue now was how to recover the cultural relics. Catching the thieves could only fall into the next step.

But things are not that simple.

The Hubei Provincial Public Security Bureau immediately reported the situation, and the response from superiors was positive. The Ministry of Public Security sent people to contact the auction house.

They thought that as long as they explained the cause and effect of the matter, they could successfully recover Tongdun, but no one expected that the auction house's attitude was extremely tough. They refused to return the cultural relics and claimed that they bought the cultural relics with real money.

It is reasonable to pursue recovery in accordance with the law, but the premise is that there is a law to follow. This "law" is the international convention on the protection of cultural relics. At that time, China had not yet joined the Convention, so if we wanted to recover the cultural relics, we had to let our country prove the entire process of the sale of Bronze Dun, and only then could we get it back by recovering the stolen goods.

In other words, our country still has to find the real culprit who sold Bronze Dun before it can get back the cultural relics.

The case is back to where it started.

The task force was dispatched again, and they searched frantically along the only clue of pipe cutters.

This time the task force focused on old cases that had occurred, and as a result, they actually found one!

At the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China in a county in Hubei Province, there was also a case of financial bonds being stolen by using a pipe wrench to smash the lock of the cabinet!

According to trace identification, the model of this pipe wrench is the same as that of Qu Yuan Memorial Hall. In other words, the real culprit in the two cases is likely to be the same person!

The task force immediately went to the county town to conduct a new round of investigation.

After several weeks of hard work, the task force finally tracked down a theft gang in the county. What is even more shocking is that after comparison, it was found that the fingerprints of one of the thieves coincided with the fingerprints left at the theft scene of Qu Yuan Memorial Hall. !

Now that things have developed to this point, the truth has come to light, and the task force can almost conclude that it was this group of thieves who stole the cultural relics from Qu Yuan Memorial Hall.

In December 1988, the theft gang was arrested and brought to justice. After a period of rigorous interrogation, the gang revealed the entire truth.

The mastermind was one of the people named Li Jianxin. He sneaked into the Qu Yuan Memorial Hall while it was closed and stole the cultural relics.

Cultural relics can be easily found in his hands, and as a habitual criminal, Li Jianxin knew he had to get rid of them immediately.

So he found a cultural relics dealer in Guangzhou, and the two parties reached an agreement and exchanged 30,000 yuan for these cultural relics.

After the cultural relics dealer succeeded, he was afraid that the police would find him, so he immediately sold it to a Hong Kong businessman.

After being resold by Hong Kong businessmen, the pair of bronze coins were sold to the United States. After five months of turbulence, the bronze coins finally appeared at an American auction.

After finding out the whole story, the Ministry of Public Security and the Cultural Relics Bureau jointly negotiated and submitted a complete case report, a complete chain of evidence and a logical chain of investigation. After it was 100% confirmed that the Bronze Dun was a stolen cultural relic in my country, the auction house finally canceled the auction. plan and agreed to return Qingtong to our country.

At this point, the case of Qu Yuan Memorial Hall being stolen has finally come to an end.

The mastermind of the case, Li Jianxin, and another accomplice were sentenced to death.

In May 1989, nearly a year after the incident, Qingtong from the Eastern Zhou Dynasty once again crossed the ocean and returned to the embrace of his motherland.

The great significance of this case is that it is the first successful case of recovery through legal means in my country, and it also provides valuable experience for more international cultural relic recovery cases in the future.

At the end of the case file, two documents on international conventions are attached.

The first is the Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict and its Protocols issued in 1954.

The second is the Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Illegal Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property issued in 1970.

These are the two international legal documents on the recourse to cultural relics so far. All recourse must be based on these two legal documents.

The most critical thing is a complete chain of evidence.

Of course, there is another important prerequisite, which is that it must be a party to the Convention.

(End of this chapter)