French police are hunting a “gentleman robber” who pulled off a spectacular daylight robbery, stealing more than €6 million (£5.2 million) worth of jewels from one of the most exclusive stores in central Paris.

 

In the latest of a series of high-value European jewel thefts, the man, in his 50s and wearing an elegant suit and fedora hat, pulled out a gun in the Chopard boutique in the Place Vendôme. He quietly ordered the three staff to hand over the contents of the display window.

         

“A man on his own, well dressed, who could have been a potential client, came into the jewellers, his faced unmasked, at one o’clock,” said an investigator. The staff and customers did as they were told and the man left and disappeared into the pedestrian square, which was full of strollers enjoying the holiday weekend sun. The Vendôme is also home to the Justice Ministry, the Ritz hotel and an array of other jewellers. In two minutes the man took 15 high-priced items.

 

Chopard makes watches and jewels for the stars and has branches in most of the world’s capitals. Last year it provided the Palme d’Or trophy for the Cannes film festival.

 

Staff in adjoining boutiques saw and heard nothing unusual during the braquage éclair — lightning hold-up — that had the hallmarks of other recent daring robberies in Paris and other European capitals. Insurance companies reported a 70 per cent rise in robbery claims from Paris jewellers in January and February.

 

Suspicion has fallen on the Pink Panthers, the name given to a diffuse international gang with origins in the Balkans. French police describe the group’s crimes as lightning-fast hold-ups: daring, but planned down to smallest detail.

 

In December thieves staged a €74 million jewel theft at the Harry Winston boutique in the Avenue Montaigne, near the Place Vendôme, off the Champs-Elysees. Four robbers, two disguised as women, calmly emptied the store as staff and customers lay on the floor.

 

The Harry Winston raid came a year after the same store was attacked by robbers who forced staff to empty its safes, taking at least €10 million worth of jewels.

 

The Pink Panthers have accumulated loot worth up to €200 million in an estimated 120 attacks on stores in around 20 countries since their first robbery in Mayfair in London in 2003.

 

Two weeks ago Paris police arrested two Serbians, alleged to be Panthers, and charged them with carrying out armed raids on stores in Monaco, Switzerland and Germany.

 

Last Thursday a former soldier from Montenegro, also said to be a Panther, was sentenced to 15 years in jail for a 2005 jewel robbery in the Riviera resort of Saint-Tropez. The court in Draguignan also fined Dusko Martinovic €130,000 for the raid, which he carried out in 90 seconds with two accomplices who have not been caught. The trio escaped into the Mediterranean aboard a speed boat before the police reached the boutique that they had emptied.

 

The world record for a jewellery theft remains the $100 million (£62 million) robbery of diamonds in Antwerp, Belgium, in 2003.

 

(Charles Bremner, Times Online, 31 May 2009)