Jewel Theft Stuns French Riviera for Its Simplicity
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Version 0 of 1. PARIS — From beginning to end, the entire operation lasted about as long as a movie trailer. A lone gunman struck a luxury Cannes hotel, snatching a sack with more than $136 million in jewels in it before vanishing in the crowded French Riviera, historic promenade of the world’s filmmakers. No shots were fired. The thief slipped through a ground floor French door that was usually locked. He fled through another side door. “He was professional and very rapid,” said Philippe Vique, an assistant prosecutor for the region in Grasse. The theft, on Sunday morning at the Carlton InterContinental — a Belle Époque-style hotel on the waterfront where Alfred Hitchcock filmed scenes from the 1955 classic “To Catch a Thief” — was the second in two months on the fabled Croisette promenade; a Chopard necklace was stolen from another hotel in the midst of the Cannes film festival in May. The robbery also followed the theft of diamonds worth as much as $350 million at the Brussels airport in February. “There have been a lot of robberies at high-end stores in Europe and France,” said Edahn Golan, a diamond industry analyst in Israel. “The big question is, How come so many thefts in Europe?” The rash of jewel robberies raised questions among some insurers, industry insiders and law enforcement agencies over whether the common thread of the crimes was opportunity, insider information or simply lax security measures. The recriminations followed quickly after Sunday’s robbery. The ease of the theft led to immediate speculation about conspirators. In France, a number of experts in security and insurance were aghast that one man had managed to find a simple way to steal a precious trove of diamonds. “I’m stunned that a lone man comes armed into the Carlton and steals millions,” said Gilles Caudrelier, a French executive who specializes in issuing insurance for jewelry exhibitions, which are required to post security dogs and private guards. “It was too simple. Of course there was someone helping inside.” On the morning after the robbery, the hotel, celebrating its centennial, was still draped with huge rose-colored signs promoting an exclusive exhibition of the missing Leviev diamonds, owned by an Israeli real estate and diamond mogul, Lev Leviev. The estimated value of 34 “exceptional” diamond rings, earrings and other jewelry was revised upward to $136 million on Monday afternoon, according to Mr. Vique, the prosecutor, who said the Dubai-based organizer of the private diamond show increased the amount after evaluating the inventory, which also included 38 other lesser diamonds. The prosecutor said the suspect, masked with a bandanna and a hat, entered a private hotel salon through an open window and threatened three private security guards, a manager and some vendors with an automatic pistol. Then he grabbed a sack containing a briefcase and a box and fled on foot. Mr. Leviev, a billionaire whose Africa Israel Investments was one of Israel’s largest real-estate companies before it refinanced debt after the 2008 global economic crisis, started his career in the diamond business and has mining investments in Angola. From Israel, Africa Israel issued a brief statement about the theft, saying, “Company officials are cooperating with local authorities investigating the loss and are relieved that no one was injured in the robbery.” It was unclear which company had insured the diamonds. Many industry experts, though, speculated that it was Lloyd’s of London, which was the ultimate victim of the Brussels airport diamond robbery; it resulted in losses estimated at $50 million to $350 million and the arrest of more than 30 people suspected of conspiracy. The London company did not directly address the question of whether it was the underwriter. “Individual policies are commercial arrangements between the underwriter and customer,” it said in a statement. “The Lloyd’s insurance market always seeks to settle valid claims as quickly as possible.” On Monday morning, the newspaper Nice-Matin reported that some members of the Cannes hotel association were grumbling about luxury hotels that rent space for jewelry exhibitions but were not built for high security. The association’s president, Michel Chevillon, did not respond to messages seeking comment. The Carlton’s employees union, the C.G.T., also raised questions about security in a statement that called for the French government to investigate the safety of allowing exhibitions of luxury products in hotels. They expressed surprise that the local police had not been alerted that the diamond exhibition was taking place and took note of a robbery at the Carlton in 1994 when a security guard was shot and wounded. Scott Andrew Selby, who co-wrote a 2012 book titled “Flawless” on a diamond theft ring in Belgium, said he believed that the recent strikes in Cannes showed that the thieves had been doing their advance work. “All these jobs seem a little suspicious with a little help from the inside, but it’s also possible that someone scouted it well,” Mr. Selby said. “A hotel is not built to be Fort Knox. The thieves have realized that high-value targets are in places with low-value security.” |