Madrid – Spain said Monday it will soon send hulking military transport planes to Florida to retrieve 17 tons of treasure that U.S. undersea explorers found but ultimately lost in American courts, a find experts have speculated could be the richest shipwreck treasure in history.
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The Civil Guard said agents would leave within hours to take possession of the booty, worth an estimated euro380 million ($504 million), and two Spanish Hercules transport planes will bring it back. But it was not exactly clear when – Monday or Tuesday – the planes and the agents would leave Spain.
Last week, a federal judge ordered Tampa-based Odyssey Marine Exploration to give Spanish officials access to the silver coins and other artifacts beginning Tuesday.
Odyssey found them in a Spanish galleon, the Nuestra Senora de las Mercedes, in 2007 off Portugal. Spain argued successfully in court that it never relinquished ownership of the ship or its contents.
The Spanish Culture Ministry said Monday the coins are classified as national heritage and as such must stay inside the country and will be displayed in one or more Spanish museums. It ruled out the idea of the treasure being sold to ease Spain’s national debt.
Besides its debt woes, Spain is saddled with a nearly dormant economy and a 23 percent jobless rate.
Odyssey made an international splash in 2007 when it recovered the 594,000 coins and other artifacts from the Atlantic Ocean near the Straits of Gilbraltar. At the time, experts said the coins could be worth as much as $500 million to collectors, which would have made it the richest shipwreck treasure in history.
The company said in earnings statements that it has spent $2.6 million salvaging, transporting, storing and conserving the treasure.
Odyssey fought Spain’s claim to the treasure, arguing that the wreck was never positively identified as the Nuestra Senora de las Mercedes. And if it was that vessel, then the ship was on a commercial trade trip – not a sovereign mission – at the time it sank, meaning Spain would have no firm claim to the cargo, Odyssey argued. International treaties generally hold that warships sunk in battle are protected from treasure seekers.
The Nuestra Senora de las Mercedes was sunk by British warships in the Atlantic while sailing back from South America with more than 200 people on board.
This firm risked life / limb and spent a huge amount of money and US courts sided with the Spanish Government…. I thought that Maritime Salvage Law would have given the finder claim to the prize.
I was under the impression that it is still very possible for the SC to hear the case, but that in the mean time the coins must be returned to Spain. Given Spain’s current financial woes and history of being less-than-equitable (to say the least), I think the current view is that once they get their hands on the coins, we’ll never see them again. This is the reason why they were flown as far from Spain as possible at the onset to begin with. The one saving grace from this whole debacle will be when Spain tries to liquidate the coins indiscriminately with no regard for their “cultural heritage” and looks the fool for all that has been said in court. Not that they will care what they look like with creditors breathing down their necks (and protests building in the streets from newly implemented austerity measures to be put in place).
I could be wrong, perhaps one of the resident experts could chime in.
If its up to me, I would have asked the coins to be returned to the water were it was storaged in safety.
What a stupid company. This operation should not be done by a public company. You and me would have melted it away to bars the day we found it.
Send Spain the bill for recovery.
Spain does not have money to pay for the recovery. They may as well give them part of the treasure!! Otherwise they may never collect!!
Since the booty was plundered from Central Anerica, I am surprised that those states haven’t launched a claim.
Avreich, what don’t you understand? Why should Spain get their hands on it, while this goes all the way to the supreme court. 2281400 correctly predicts that if Spain looses in SC there is reasonable doubt this American company will ever collect.
As a pious Jew 1400 is entitled to melt the coins and not tell anyone about it. He is under no obligation by American law to let anyone know about his finds and the Torah declared, zitteh shel yom is hefker.
The solution 1400 proposes seems logical. Since they are capable of bringing it back at a later time. (If they win the case).