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U.S. couple risk trial in France over stolen 18th-century shipwreck gold

U.S. couple risk trial in France over stolen 18th-century shipwreck gold

Ottawa Citizen03-07-2025
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He had known the author and her husband since the 1980s, and they had joined him on holiday on his catamaran in Greece in 2011, in the Caribbean in 2014 and in French Polynesia in 2015, investigators found.
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The Courter couple were detained in the United Kingdom in 2022, then put under house arrest.
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French investigators concluded that they had been in possession of at least 23 gold bars in total. They found they had sold 18 ingots for more than US$192,000, including some via online sale platform eBay. But the Courters claimed the arrangement had always been for the money to go to Gladu.
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A prosecutor in the western French city of Brest has requested that the Courters, Gladu and Pesty be tried, according to a document obtained by AFP on Tuesday.
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An investigating magistrate still has to decide whether or not to order a trial, but prosecutors said a trial was likely in the autumn of 2026.
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The U.S. couple's lawyer, Gregory Levy, said they had had no idea what they were getting into.
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'The Courters accepted because they are profoundly nice people. They didn't see the harm as in the United States, regulations for gold are completely different from those in France,' he said, adding the couple had not profited from the sales.
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Lawyers for the other suspects did not immediately respond to an AFP request for comment.
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Courter has written several fiction and non-fiction books, some nautical-themed, according to her website. One is a thriller set on a cruise ship, while another is her real-life account of being trapped on an ocean liner off the Japanese coast during a 2020 Covid quarantine.
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