Gold toilet worth £4.8m 'stolen in five minutes'

The solid gold toilet disappeared from Blenheim Palace in 2019

Thieves stole a £4.8m solid gold toilet from Blenheim Palace in an "audacious raid" which took just five minutes, a court has heard.

The toilet was plumbed in and fully functioning as part of an art exhibition at the Oxfordshire stately home in September 2019.

Michael Jones, 39, from Divinity Road, Oxford denies a charge of burglary. Fred Doe, previously known as Frederick Sines, 36, from Windsor, and 41-year-old Bora Guccuk, from west London, have pleaded not guilty to conspiring to transfer criminal property.

Their trial at Oxford Crown Court was told the toilet was most likely broken up and was never recovered.

The toilet was part of an art exhibition at Blenheim Palace

Prosecutor Julian Christopher KC told the court that a gang of five in two vehicles drove through locked gates of Blenheim Palace in the early hours of 14 September 2019 and smashed their way into the building with sledgehammers.

The court heard that the sledgehammers were left at the scene.

A photograph was taken about 17 hours before the toilet was stolen and Mr Christopher told the court that Mr Jones had taken it while he was "there as part of the reconnaissance for the burglary".

Mr Christopher told the court the raid took just five minutes.

He added: "The work of art was never recovered. It appears to have been split up into smaller amounts of gold and never recovered."

A fourth man, James Sheen, 40, from Wellingborough in Northamptonshire, pleaded guilty to burglary, transferring criminal property and conspiracy to do the same in April 2024, jurors were told.

Entitled America, the 18-carat gold toilet was part of an exhibition by Italian conceptual artist Maurizio Cattelan.

It weighed 98kg and was insured for $6m. Gold prices at the time would have seen the gold alone worth £2.8m in September 2019, the court was told.

The prosecutor said a series of messages, voice notes and screengrabs discovered on Mr Sheen, Mr Doe and Mr Guccuk's phones showed the trio negotiated a price of £25,632 per kilo for around 20kg of the stolen gold.

It was claimed Mr Guccuk, who ran the jewellers Pacha of London in Hatton Garden, would make a profit of about £3,000 for every kilo he sold on.

The palace is a Unesco World Heritage Site and was the birthplace of Sir Winston Churchill.

The trial continues.