Thieves steal 30,000 wine bottles worth €5m in Italy, reports say
Thieves stole 30,000 bottles of high-end wine worth €5 million from the Italian winery Marchesi Antinori. The sophisticated heist involved disabling security systems and using forklifts to load trucks, leading officials to suspect inside knowledge.
Why it matters
The scale of this theft is unprecedented in Italy, raising concerns about security in the luxury goods and wine export sectors.
Image source, Bloomberg via Getty Images Image caption, File photo of wine from Italian company Marchesi Antinori
Thieves have stolen 30,000 bottles of wine collectively worth about €5m (£4.2m) from a prestigious Italian winery, Italian media reports.
Marchesi Antinori, one of Italy's biggest family-owned wineries, said the theft at its storage facility in Tuscany took place on Saturday as the company was preparing to ship a consignment to customers abroad.
At least seven masked men are believed to have deactivated the alarms, disabled the cameras and used company forklifts to load two large trucks of the company's prized Tignanello, Solaia and Guado al Tasso Tuscan reds.
Renzo Cotarella, the chief executive, told Corriere della Sera this was the largest theft of its kind in Italy.
"A theft of this scale and value has certainly never occurred in Italy," he said.
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