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Jewel thieves hit London store |
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By: Agencies |
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Date:
2009-08-12 |
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Place: LONDON |
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Steal valuables worth Rs 316 crore
Two well-dressed thieves walked into a London Bond Street jewelry store last week and, after brandishing handguns at shop workers, made off with £40 million (Rs 316 crore) worth of gems in one of Britain's biggest jewellery heists.
Security camera footage released by police shows two men in crisp suits entering Graff Diamonds' flagship store on Thursday afternoon. It was the third time a Graff store in London had been targeted in a high-profile raid in the past six years.
The men fired two gunshots into the ground as they escaped in a series of getaway cars, police said. No one was hurt.
Items stolen included a pair of white diamond double hoop earrings, a flowing flower necklace with yellow diamond petals, a platinum white Marquise diamond ring and a Chronograff watch.
It was among the biggest heists in British history far outstripping the 1963 Great Train Robbery in which £2 million were lost.
Last week's theft, however, was topped by the 2006 robbery of £53 million (Rs 419 crore) in cash from a security company depot in southern England, and was rivaled by the 1987 theft of an estimated £40 million from the Knightsbridge Safe Deposit Center in London.
Police declined to rank Thursday's robbery, saying only that it was one of the country's biggest.
Graff's store, a classical stucco and stone town house in London's jewellery district, has been targeted by thieves in the past.
Not the 1st time
The same store lost jewelry worth £23 million (Rs 182 crore) in 2003 when it was robbed by jewel thief Nebojsa Denic, a Serb and a member of the notorious gang of Balkan robbers known as the Pink Panthers.
Denic was sentenced to 15 years in prison.
In 2007, another smartly dressed pair was chauffeured to the store's Sloane Street branch in a Bentley Continental Flying Spur.
They whipped out handguns and made off with £10 million (Rs 79 crore) worth of gems. |
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