They dressed up as women and robbed an exclusive jewelry store without a single shot: what was the “Pink Panthers” coup in Paris?

In the beautiful city of Paris, Francejust meters from the Champs-Elysées, is the famous golden triangle, where the leading fashion houses and luxury boutiques. However, it was on one of those corners, on Avenue Montaigne, that the one of the most impressive robberies in history.

He December 6, 2007through a high intelligence operation, A group of robbers managed to take 80 million euros in jewelry (more than 100 million euros) from the Harry Winston store. Exactly one year had passed since another assault in the same premises, where the thieves took about 13 million dollars.

The police suspected that they were the Pink Panthersa gang of thieves made up of members from Balkan countries, who were nicknamed this way by the British police in 2004, when in a robbery They hid a ring with a blue diamond worth almost a million dollars inside a jar of facial creamas in the famous Blake Edwards film.

The Pink Panthers have been operating since 2003 and are responsible for between 90 and 100 robberies, in which they took an estimated $260 million.

What was the robbery at the Harry Winston jewelry store in Paris like?

Harry Winston was about to close, when At 5:30 p.m., four armed people entered and took almost all the jewelry on the ground floor and first floor.. The curious thing is that two of them were dressed as womenalthough the information is useful for later.

The operation It lasted only 15 minutes.although that was enough, since the assailants had already carried out previous intelligence work, knew the names of the employees and their addresses, and knew the places where the jewelry that was not exposed was kept.

That is why they almost did not have to use any violence. They did not fire any weapons.and the only episode was a blow to one of the people who was inside the premises when the robbery began. Once they gathered all the loot, the thieves had the bold idea of ​​going out in pairs. That’s how they got lost in the Parisian crowd.

What happened to the jewels and the criminals

The Organized Crime Suppression Brigade of the Paris judicial police recognized that the robbery It was carried out by great professionals. However, it was possible to identify that three of the assailants spoke in a “strange language, difficult to identify”according to witnesses. This could have been due to their nationality, which is why they had a different accent.

Just last Monday of the week of the robbery, a court in Chambéry, in the French Alps, He began to try two Serbs from that gangaccused of having looted three jewelry stores in Courchevel station in 2003. Likewise, another member called Dragan Mikic He was being tried because on October 15, 2005 he escaped from the Villefranche-sur-Saône prison.

Anyway, After the robbery, trace of the assailants was lost. The group, made up mainly of Serbs, Croats, Bosnians and Montenegrins, remains a nightmare for Interpol.