France and jewellery heists

Jewellery worth £4.2m were stolen from the Ritz Hotel in Paris, on January 10

France is fast developing a dubious reputation for jewellery heists.  Here is a summary of France's biggest jewellery heists in the past 10 years:

A CUSTOMER IN CANNES

January 2017 : A man walks into a boutique in the French resort town and is greeted as a customer before pulling out a gun and making off with 15 million euros worth of jewellery.

SWITCH 

Robber posing as a client switches two rough diamonds and two rings, worth around 5.5 million euros, with fakes at a Swiss jeweller's private showroom in Paris in December 2016. Man arrested in Romania the following month.

FROM THE AIRPORT

November 2016 : Masked robbers hold up two Qatari women in their 60s who are in a chauffeur-driven Bentley having just landed at a Paris airport.  Jewels and other items worth more than five million euros stolen.

KIM KARDASHIAN

US reality television star tied up and robbed at gunpoint in October 2016 by thieves who make off with jewellery worth at least nine million euros.  Kim was in Paris for Fashion Week and staying in a luxury residence.

CANNES AGAIN

Four robbers, one wearing the mask of an elderly person, steal 17.5 million euros in jewellery and watches from a boutique in May 2015 just days before the start of the city's international film festival.

PARIS AIRPORT TAXI 

In April 2015 robbers make off with a handbag containing four million euros worth of Chanel jewels in a smash-and-grab attack on a taxi between Paris and Charles De Gaulle airport.

Victim was a Taiwanese art collector.

HIGHWAY HOLD-UP

Around 15 robbers stop two vans at a toll booth on the A6 motorway in March 2015, near the central city of Auxerre, and make off with jewellery worth around nine million euros.

CANNES DIAMOND DISPLAY

In July 2013 a man armed with a semi-automatic pistol and his head covered with a cloth walks into the Carlton hotel and steals jewels that were part of an exhibition and worth 103 million euros.  It is the largest jewellery heist in France.

MAYOR OF KIEV'S DAUGHTER

In February 2010 a robber steals a handbag with 4.5 million euros in jewels from the daughter of a mayor of Kiev being driven into Paris from an airport.

MARSEILLE

In May 2010 armed robbers walk off with seven million euros in gems after taking a jewel wholesaler and his family hostage in a town near Marseille.

CANNES

In July 2009 three men take 15 millions euros worth of jewels in a hold-up of a Cartier store in Cannes.

CHOPARD STORE

In May 2009 a lone robber saunters into the exclusive Chopard jewellery store in Paris's upmarket central Place Vendome and leaves with 6.8 million euros of jewellery.

PARIS

Three men took around 900 pieces from the Harry Winston jewellery boutique on Paris's chic Avenue Montaigne in December 2008. Some are recovered but the loss is estimated at nearly 79 million euros. Fifteen men linked to the crime are eventually jailed.