A Squabble over some treasure

Remember about that big shipwreck discovery I wrote about here: A shipwreck and a lot of coins. Well, it didn't take long for several governments to claim their parts of the pie... From Breitbart/AFP:

Deep sea treasure trove launches trans-Atlantic dispute
Hardly had deep-sea treasure hunters had time to celebrate their discovery this month of perhaps the world's richest treasure wreck before the marine booty became the centre of a heated ownership debate.

The US company Odyssey Marine Exploration announced on May 18 it had discovered the wreck, code-named "Black Swan", using the latest in undersea robot technology.

But mystery surrounds who owns the more than 17 tonnes of silver and gold coins and other artefacts the vessel was carrying when it went down, and a debate is even raging about where it sank.

According to some reports the ship sank 40 miles (60 kilometres) off the coast of Cornwall in southwestern England, opposite Spain's northwestern coastline, while other reports claim it went down in the Strait of Gibraltar.

Odyssey has insisted it found the wreck in international waters in the Atlantic but has kept the exact site secret, but Madrid suspects the ship was discovered in Spanish territorial waters and a Spanish newspaper reported the vessel itself belonged to Spain.

"What we're seeing here is a presumed incidence of plundering," First Deputy Prime Minister Maria Teresa Fernandez de la Vega said Friday.

Spain opened a probe into the exact location of the wreck last week after the culture ministry became suspicious of the circumstances in which the cargo, worth an estimated 400 million dollars, was found.

Odyssey co-founder Greg Stemm however denies anything untoward.

In an interview with El Pais newspaper Saturday Stemm said Madrid would be informed if the ship turned out to be Spanish and pointed out his company had offered to receive Spanish archaeologists aboard.

"We haven't yet identified where it comes from. The find site is full of lost colonial-era vessels," he added.

Emphasis mine. England is also very curious about this wreck. That last line above makes the hair on my arms raise up -- this sounds like a major major find.