THE THIEF looked elegant in his suit and fedora hat. Employees at Chopard, one of several luxury jewellery shops on the Place Vendôme, assumed he was a potential customer and let him through the security door. The man pulled a handgun from his pocket, demanded 15 pieces from the display window, and calmly walked out into the afternoon sunshine.
The manner of the robbery was in harmony with the lazy bank holiday weekend, when all eyes were on the French Open tennis tournament at Roland Garros.
The robber didn’t bother wearing a mask, and didn’t even take everything in the window.
In two minutes it was over. Neither tourists, weekend shoppers nor staff in the adjoining boutiques noticed anything. A judiciary source estimated the value of the stolen jewels at €6.6 million.
There is a permanent police presence on the Place Vendôme, which is home to the world’s most expensive jewellers: Cartier, Van Cleef Arpels, Boucheron and Chaumet, as well as Mohamed al-Fayed’s Ritz Hotel and the ministry of justice.
Chopard was founded in Switzerland in 1860 and has made the Palme d’Or award for the Cannes film festival for the past decade.
The booty in Saturday’s heist was a fraction of the €85 million worth of jewels seized by four robbers, two of whom were disguised as women, when they raided the Harry Winston shop in the avenue Montaigne last December.
No one was caught for that robbery, which occurred almost exactly one year after thieves stole €16 million in jewels from the same shop.
The biggest diamond theft of all time, totalling €100 million, took place in Anvers, Belgium, in 2003.
An international gang called the Pink Panthers and comprised of citizens of the former Yugoslavia is suspected of carrying out the Harry Winston raid. This network is believed to have stolen some €200 million worth of jewels in 20 countries over the past decade.
Two Serbian members of the Pink Panthers were arrested in Paris on May 13th and charged with robbing shops in Monaco, Switzerland and Germany. On May 28th, a former Montenegrin soldier was sentenced to 15 years in prison and fined €150,000 for robbing €2 million worth of jewels from a shop in Saint-Tropez.
No one has linked the Pink Panthers to Saturday’s theft. Police describe the Balkan gang’s modus operandi as “lightning fast holdups: daring, but carefully planned down to the smallest detail.”
Jewellery heists have increased dramatically since banks and post offices installed better security. Seven years ago, the Fred jewellery shop on the Place Vendôme was robbed by two men carrying a hand grenade hidden in a bouquet of flowers.