A Saudi princess has reported the theft of jewels worth €800,000 from her suite in the Ritz Hotel in Paris. The neighborhood is home to dozens of luxury boutiques and jewelry stores.
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A member of the Saudi royal family says jewels worth €800,000 ($930,000) went missing from her suite at the Ritz Hotel in Paris, a police source said on Monday. The unnamed princess said the theft happened on Friday afternoon.
The jewels had not been placed in the hotel safe and there was no sign of forced entry into the princess' room. It was the second heist this year reported from the luxury five-star hotel which is located on Place Vendome in the heart of the French capital.
In January, an armed gang used axes to smash the windows of shops in the Paris Ritz, making off with several million euros worth of jewelry. Three suspects were arrested as they fled the scene. All of the stolen goods, some of which were dropped by the thieves as they tried to escape, were recovered.
Paris has been the scene of several other high-profile jewelry robberies and heists, including in October 2016 when American socialite and social media star Kim Kardashian West was robbed at gunpoint. She was tied up and locked in a bathroom after a gang of armed men burst into her Paris apartment, making off with around $9.5 million (€8.2 million) worth of jewelry.
'Guilty' verdict on the spectacular 2010 art theft
Five paintings by masters like Picasso, Matisse and Modigliani disappeared from Paris' Modern Art Museum one night in 2010. The loss is estimated at up to 100 million euros. But how could it happen in the first place?
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Through the window
A guard at the Paris Museum of Modern Art discovered the break-in while doing his morning rounds. Museum staff noticed that a window pane and a padlock had been broken. Surveillance cameras revealed a bundled up person climbing through a window in the museum. This painting by Amedeo Modigliani, "The Lady with the Fan," was among those missing.
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Five masterpieces
"Dove with Green Peas," painted by Spanish master Pablo Picasso in 2012 also disappeared from the Paris Museum of Modern Art on May 20, 2010. It was the most expensive of the five stolen works.
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Who hired the thieves?
Henri Matisse's "Pastoral" (1905) was also among the thief's bounty. Paintings as famous as these essentially cannot be sold because they would draw too much attention on the art market.
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Artworks still lost
Pierre Cornette de Saint-Cyr, director of the Palais de Tokyo, which hosts the Museum of Modern Art, simply said the thieves were "idiots" because the stolen works could not be sold. No collector would buy them. They have not surfaced since the theft. Among them is "Olive Tree Near Estaque" by Georges Braque (1907).
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The thieves had it easy
The motion sensor in the museum hadn't been working for months. And the alarm system, which should have been set off when the window was broken, was also out of order. Apparently, the thieves didn't have many challenges to overcome - even though the museum had recently been outfitted with new security technology.
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Open questions
Here, the police are securing evidence at the scene. The case was assigned to a special team of experts, but they still have not been able to locate the works. The thief, Vjéran Tomic, has not revealed who was behind the job, but has now been sentenced to eight years in prison.
