GIFU -- A yakuza link has been made in the connection with the high profile theft from a Gifu Prefecture museum last year of some 100 kilograms of gold bars worth about 200 million yen as the trial of two men accused of the robbery began here.

Yoshimi Kure, 41, unemployed of Kitakyushu, and Kohei Horikawa, 23, a construction worker from Ashiya, Fukuoka Prefecture, both pleaded guilty to the charge of robbery resulting in injury as their trial opened at the Gifu District Court.

They are accused of acting together with 55-year-old Ryuichi Osaki to steal the gold bars from the Ohashi Collection Building in March last year.

Osaki has been placed on a nationwide wanted list and remains at large.

Prosecutors demanded the two defendants be jailed for nine years each.

"It was a brazen, audacious and malicious act," a prosecution lawyer said.

Horikawa's lawyer told the court his client had been sucked in to the case.

"Kure came to him and explained the plans behind the robbery and Horikawa decided to take part because he thought it would be like (anime thief) Lupin the Third," the lawyer said.

Prosecutors told the court that after Kure left prison in May 2005 he was determined to get his hands on a large sum of money, even if that meant he had to carry out crimes to get it.

He joined Osaki, who he had met in jail, and they planned the robbery with Horikawa, who had been introduced by another associate.

After the robbery, Kure assumed several false identities, which he used to sell the gold bars to numerous precious metal brokers separately on six occasions from late March to early June last year.

Some of the money he received was transferred to several different bank accounts, including one with links to a yakuza crime syndicate.

On one more occasion, Kure sent a gold bar to a dealer through a delivery service, offering to sell it.

The dealer recognized the gold bar was stolen and alerted the police, who tracked down Kure and arrested him.

Prosecutors said the gang earned about 70 million yen from the sale of the gold.

Horikawa, prosecutors said, received 5 million yen, Osaki around 15 million yen and Kure took the rest.

The next hearing in Kure's case will be held in conjunction with a trial for a separate gold bar robbery, where he is accused of stealing about 30 kilograms of gold in Oita Prefecture in February 2006.

The robbery was widely reported in the world's media at the time it occurred.

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