200 kg of gold confiscated by police

TIRANA, Sep 25 – Police reported Wednesday they had arrested two brothers after finding 200 kilograms of gold they had hidden in their home exploiting that for contraband.
Astrit and Genti Lamce, 45 and 38 years old respectively, were arrested Wednesday downtown capital Tirana in an operation codenamed Golden Watch and some 200 kilograms of gold found at their working place were confiscated. Their market price was some 1 million Euros.
Police also found 210,000 Euros, 1.5 million leks, $500 and many other working and packaging items.
Two employees working at the moment of arrest were also arrested.
A day later police said they were accused of fiscal evasion and of copying world trade marks when producing jewelries with their gold.
Police and prosecutor’s office were also investigating if two gold pieces among the jewelries belonged to the state thesaurus reserves stolen during the anarchic year of 1997.
Lamce brothers said they had collected that amount of gold only in the last month much of it bought in Turkey, refusing to speak more without lawyers.
Police also said it was very likely much of the gold came from neighboring Greece illegally.
Police, saying they had investigated the case since three months, believe there are other people involved in this case who are being investigated. No name or target person was identified.