Is history the key to finding the Hatton Garden diamonds?
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Version 0 of 1. So who were the diamond geezers who broke into the Hatton Garden safety deposit boxes over the Easter weekend – and where have they taken all their loot? Nobody knows, of course. But if detectives on the ground in London’s jewellery district need a lead, history suggests they ought to look for a traditional “inside man” as their likeliest link to the thieves. Back in 1987, the Knightsbridge Safe Deposit Centre was robbed of an estimated £60m by a gang led by an Italian lawyer’s son called Valerio Viccei. But central to the robbery was Parvez Latif, who worked at the centre, and whom Viccei schmoozed at London nightclubs before involving him in the plot. Viccei himself did a runner to South America immediately after the robbery but came back to arrange for the transportation of his Ferrari Testarossa – as one does – and was arrested, jailed for 22 years and finally, in a completely unconnected affair, shot dead by police back in Italy in 2000. When another record-breaking £53m robbery took place at the Securitas centre in Tonbridge in Kent in 2006, once again there was an inside man, Emir Hysenaj, an Albanian, who had worked briefly at the centre and who had filmed inside it with a hidden camera. Given the reputation that eastern European criminals now have as jewel thieves, as a result of the so-called “Pink Panther” robberies carried out all over Europe over the past few years, supposedly by a gang of Serbs, no doubt attention will be focussed eastwards now. “It’s not hard to get rid of diamonds,” said one – now retired – specialist in the field yesterday. “They wouldn’t need to take them to Switzerland, they could easily tuck them back into the trade here. Who could it be? Serbs? Who knows?” He also wondered whether there might just have been a connection with the massive electrical fire in nearby Holborn the day before the break-in that could have conveniently messed up the alarm system. Jewels are easier to get rid of than paintings or banknotes. Diamonds, whether rough or polished, can be easily transformed and sold on. Criminals who steal from safety deposit boxes also benefit from the slightly ambivalent public reaction to such thefts and the idea that some of the victims may have been hiding ill-gotten gains themselves, whether from the police, the taxman or the ex-wife. As for the leisurely style of taking a long weekend to carry out the theft, the closest parallel is that of the Baker Street bank job of 1971, when a gang spent a weekend tunnelling their way into safe deposit boxes held in the vault of the local branch of Lloyds, with a look-out watching from a nearby roof-top and keeping in touch via a walkie-talkie. But if the police do get the thieves, it is unlikely that they will submit quite as politely as Viccei did in 1997. “Right, the game is up and you have no need to be nasty,” he said, as he was dragged out through the windscreen of his beloved car. “You are the winners so calm down and everything is going to be fine.” |