MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russian police said they found more than $2 million worth of diamonds and gems buried in a forest, believed to be a hidden trove from a heist carried out by a Colombian suspect during the 2018 soccer World Cup.
Police released pictures of mud-covered plastic bags, filled with rings and brooches, which they said had been recovered in the woods in the city of Kazan, after the suspect, Edgar Alejandro Valero Valero, confessed to hiding them.
Valero Valero was arrested in Argentina in 2019 and extradited to Russia earlier this year, the police said in a statement released on Thursday. A lawyer for the suspect could not be reached for comment.
The jewellery, worth 160 million roubles ($2.2 million), had been stolen while being transported for display at an expo in Kazan, one of the cities that hosted World Cup matches. Russia had waived its normally strict visa requirements to admit thousands of foreign soccer fans to attend the tournament.
($1 = 73.5275 roubles)
(Reporting by Reuters TV; Writing by Gabrielle Tétrault-Farber; Editing by)
