Turkish Police Seize Rare and Most Expensive Radioactive Metal Worth $72 Million

Turkish police have seized almost 1.5 kilograms of a synthetic radioactive substance called californium, one of the most expensive metals in the world, the newspaper Yeni Safak reports.

As a result of a police operation conducted in Pursakar, a region of Ankara, four suspects were detained. They planned to sell the californium for $72 million. According to the newspaper, the market value of californium is $4 million per gram.

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It is assumed that the detainees acted not independently, but were part of a criminal group.

Law enforcers are investigating the circumstances of the appearance of an illegal material in the Turkish capital.

Californium, an element which isn't known to occur in nature, was first synthesized in 1950 at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California and is only produced in the United States and Russia.