Three guilty over Swiss museum 2m stolen Ming vase sale plot

Three men have been convicted in London in connection with the theft of a £2m vase from a Swiss museum.

The vase, which dates from the Chinese Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), was stolen from the Museum of Far Eastern Art in Geneva in June 2019.

The Met, in co-operation with Swiss law enforcement, carried out an undercover operation targeting those trying to sell the item.

The vase was recovered in October 2021 and returned to the museum.

At Southwark Crown Court on Friday, Mbaki Nkhwa, 47, of The Heights, Charlton, and Kaine Wright, 26, of Heavitree Road, Woolwich, were each found guilty of one count of conspiracy to convert criminal property.

David Lamming, 31, of Belmont Park Close, Lewisham, admitted the same offence at an earlier hearing on 23 March 2023.

In July 2020, police received call from an auction house saying that an unknown person who knew of the vase’s whereabouts had emailed to seek a valuation.

The Met traced the IP address for the email account to Lamming’s home.

Officers posed as prospective buyers when the vase went up for sale, agreeing a price of £450,000, a Met spokesperson said.

This led to a meeting in a central London hotel where Nkhwa handed over the vase to officers.

He was then arrested at the scene. Phone data showed he and Lamming had been in regular contact with Kane, who had driven to the hotel for the exchange.

Det Ch Insp Matt Webb, from the Met’s Specialist Crime Command, said: “These convictions are the result of four years’ work crossing international boundaries and involving collaboration between many internal and external partners.

“The organised crime group involved in this offending believed they could commit significant offences internationally and that there would be no comeback. They were mistaken.”

He added that the vase – actually a bottle of the Yongle period – had “an interesting tale over its hundreds of years and this is another chapter”.

All three will be sentenced on 13 October. Nkhwa and Wright have been remanded in custody while Lamming has been bailed.

Three items with a total estimated worth of £3.5m were stolen from the museum, the Met said.

A bowl valued at £80,000 was sold at an auction house in Hong Kong in 2019 but subsequently returned to the museum.

Police are offering a £10,000 reward for information leading to the recovery of a Ming Dynasty cup, the third item stolen.

Stewart and Louis Ahearne, two brothers from Woolwich, are awaiting trial in Switzerland over the museum thefts following their extradition late last year.

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