University professor Augustin Lazar, Romania's attorney general between 2016 and 2019, said on Wednesday in Targu Mures that experts who have studied the Dacian bracelet have no doubts about their authenticity, but contrary ideas are being fuelled only by those who would have an interest in Dacian gold no longer being sought after.
"I want to tell you that the experts who mattered, the serious scientific community, no longer has any doubts about the authenticity of these items. There are doubts among others who have an interest in spreading these doubts and there have been few who have interests in this. Why? Because they might have some of these items in their collections, and then they carry this idea: 'They shouldn't spend any more money, wouldn't it be better to leave them where they are because maybe they're not even authentic?' The items in Romania's historical treasure cannot be fakes. And with their tests at various prestigious laboratories in Europe and in the United States, because everyone wanted to know what we are talking about (...) and yet there were still some people, after all these tests that have established the origin of the metal - we are talking about native gold coming from the Apuseni Mountains and a certain quarry, as established by French experts. But there are some who are saying: 'what if not?'" said Lazar .
He added that these ideas were perpetuated even through a "very aggressive "media campaign.
Lazar on Wednesday gave a lecture to students of the Faculty of History and Law and masters' students from Targu Mures at a conference on the epic of Dacian Royal bracelets tied in to the presentation of a documentary film called "The Hunt for Transylvanian Gold," a production of Kogainon Films Boston, USA.
"This is about protecting Romania's cultural heritage as a whole, as a general theme and, in particular, a theme that is linked to the epic Dacian bracelets, the Dacian royal bracelets, which were stolen, as it turns out, from an archaeological site in Romania at Sarmisegetuza Regia, and then recovered, with enough difficulties, as part of international judicial operation. The students, from what I have seen, are very interested in knowing the circumstances under which these items were recovered and whether it would be possible to recover others. Judicial procedures revealed that at least 24 bracelets were stolen. Of these, 13 have been recovered and 11 are under international investigation. There is also information that there are other items having been stolen, which will be searched and, probably, found if someone continues our work from previous years," said Lazar.
The former prosecutor, who co-ordinated for several years the investigation that resulted in the repatriation of several Dacian bracelets and other items stolen from archaeological sites near the Sarmizegetusa Regia fortress, added that experts have established that the value of such a heritage piece is not assessable in money, because it is about the "Dacian thing" that is symbolised in Dacian bracelets.