[Ruiceara]

A follow up to the thread posted earlier on this topic:

Link Here

Despite finding the treasure and spending more than $2million to recover it, a federal judge on ordered a deep sea salvage company to turn over $500 million worth of Spanish coins it recovered from a shipwreck to the Spanish government within a week.

The Civil Guard said agents would leave within hours to take possession of the booty, worth an estimated $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.

The ruling by U.S. Magistrate Mark Pizzo ended a five-year legal battle between Odyssey Marine Exploration and Spain over the 594,000 gold and silver coins that were recovered from the wreck of the Spanish ship Nuestra Senora de las Mercedes in 2007 off the coast of Portugal.

The ship was sunk by the British in an 1804 battle and Spain said it retained ownership of the ship and its cargo.

article-2103972-11D516AF000005DC-127_634x361.jpg

[herawaq]

The Spanish are still pirating the seas.................

[IoninnyHaro]

What a PRISTINE reverse in that Reuters photo. Thanks!

[id2008]

yeah, nice coin, but, Jeez, the expression on that guy's face !

[IoninnyHaro]

Too funny, Gunny

I don't spend a lot of time studying men's faces. You caught me. LOL

Or did I get the obverse and reverse dealing backwards? I thought the reverse was the coat of arms....

Yes? No?

[Loopyjr]

Shouldn't Portugal have gotten claim of the coins? It was off of their coast. Littering and what not.

Why didn't the British go after it as a spoil of war too? I bet they may still be paying on the debt that financed that war.

[timgillmoreeztf]

I'll give odds on that silver getting lost all over again.

[Loopyjr]

I'll give odds on that silver getting lost all over again.

I bet the 2 planes fly to the nearest banker vault in the Caymans.

Although they could be heading to Brussels to pay off the ECB.

[nAKMzyBN]

Time for another boating accident.

[sigrekatonov]

If anyone has been following this, I'd be curious on what the legal argument was for returning it.

[LxtdK9i4]

They need to return the treasure to me. I was storing it all in that wrecked hulk ship. Darn! they found it. But it's mine!

[Ruiceara]

Ha ha, now Peru is making a claim to the coins. They say that since the treasure was mined, refined and minted in Peru, which at the time was a Spanish territory, it actually belongs to them! They've got as much a claim as Spain does I suppose. It's funny how many people want a piece of the pie.

Spain rejects Peruvian claim to shipwreck treasure

MADRID — Spain on Monday rejected Peru’s claim to a huge multimillion-dollar undersea treasure recovered from the wreckage of a ship that had left from Lima’s port more than 200 years ago.
Spain recovered the nearly 600,000 coins — mostly silver but a few made of gold — on Saturday after they were flown to Madrid from the United States. That marked the culmination of Spain’s five-year battle in U.S. courts with a Florida deep-sea exploration firm that in 2007 found the remains of a ship believed to be the Spanish frigate Nuestra Senora de las Mercedes.


...


On Thursday, the Peruvian government made an emergency appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court seeking to block transfer of the treasure to give Peru more time to make arguments in U.S. federal court about its claim to being the rightful owner. But that appeal was denied Friday by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.
Peru had argued the gold and silver on the ship was mined, refined and minted in its territory, which at the time was part of the Spanish empire.
But Carmen Marcos, deputy director of Spain’s National Museum of Archaeology, said Monday the coins were minted not just in Peru but also in Bolivia, Colombia and Chile. And the whole affair involved in claiming the coins was not about monetary value but rather history, she added.
Ha ha, right. Not about the money.

[herawaq]

Eveyones got a claim to it except the people that found it........