The Carlton hotel in Cannes was the setting for Alfred Hitchcock’s 1955 thriller To Catch a Thief, starring Grace Kelly and Cary Grant. Catching a real-life criminal is proving rather more difficult.
French police have got nowhere in their search for whoever took jewellery worth €103 million from the Carlton in 2013. In the absence of a suspect, the country’s courts have been left to determine who is to blame for the fiasco.
This week, a judge partially upheld claims that the hotel beloved by Cannes film festival stars had bungled the security arrangements at the exhibition from which the items were stolen.
The Carlton and BSL, its private security firm, were ordered by Cannes commercial court to pay a total of €15.4 million to Lloyd’s of London, which had underwritten the event.
Lloyd’s had accused the hotel of “very great amateurism” in connection with what is known in France as “the heist of the century”.
The insurer told the court that the €3,000-a-night Carlton had put a former laundryman in charge of its security, whilst BSL had supplied three nightclub bouncers to keep an eye on the exhibition, entitled Extraordinary Diamonds.
Lawyers for Lloyd’s said no one had checked that the French windows of the exhibition room were locked. They added that the logbook, which was supposed to list staff with keys to the exhibition and the times they entered and left, was “peppered with blanks”.
Cary Grant and Grace Kelly star in How to Catch a Thief. The hotel featured in the 1955 thriller fell prey to a real-life jewel heist
The exhibition was organised by Levant, the Dubai-based luxury group, in conjunction with Lev Leviev, the Israeli diamond tycoon. It was said to have featured an exceptional collection befitting a resort known for film stars and billionaires.
On July 28, 2013, after staff had brought the jewels into the room in a bag and before they could place them in display cases, an armed robber in shorts and a T-shirt walked into the room, pointed a gun at guards and left again with 72 items said to be worth €103 million.
The robber has never been identified or caught. Rumours surfaced during the civil court hearing in February that he is in Morocco.
Police do not believe that the culprit was a modern-day Moriarty. They say he was more likely to have been an amateur who got lucky as he exploited the security failings at the exhibition.
TF1, the French television channel, said in a report last year that he had entered the exhibition through a French window “strangely left unlocked”. It said the thief was suspected of having an accomplice on the inside, although no one has been charged with aiding and abetting in connection with the case.
The station said the robber was “visibly not very experienced”.
Questioned by TF1, Laurent Martin de Frémont, a local police union delegate who reviewed CCTV footage of the robbery, said. “From our point of view, the individual took big risks because you can see that when he grabs the bag [containing the jewels] he notices . . . that there are jewels on a counter and he wasted . . . two or three seconds [to pick them up]. Experienced individuals would have taken the bag and left straight away.”
Martin de Frémont added that the robber had made his getaway “at a particularly reasonable pace. That surprises us.”
This necklace was among 72 items belonging to the Israeli billionaire Lev Leviev that were stolen from the hotel by a single gunman
Lawyers for Lloyd’s argued that the Carlton and BSL should be ordered to reimburse it the $72 million it had been obliged to shell out for the stolen jewels.
The hotel and its security firm denied being responsible for the failings. They said Lloyd’s and Levant were jointly to blame.
In a ruling on Thursday, Nelly Martinez, the presiding judge at Cannes commercial court, ordered the Carlton and BSL to pay Lloyd’s €7.7 million each.
“The judgment is not exactly a great triumph for Lloyd’s since it has lost 80 per cent of what it had to pay out,” a source with knowledge of the case said.
Yves Moraine, BSL’s lawyer, said he had “mixed feelings” about the ruling. “In legal terms, it is a disappointment. But . . . since my client is insured to a level of €10 million, it has not suffered too much damage.”
Most of the jewels are still missing, The court heard claims that one had been recovered by the FBI and another had surfaced in London. A third is alleged to have been found in Dubai. However, none of these claims has been confirmed.
A year after the heist, the Carlton was bought by Katara Hospitality, a Qatari state fund. It subsequently closed for a three-year renovation estimated to have cost between €350 million and €500 million.
The hotel has now reopened, in time for the film festival that starts next week. Brad Pitt will be among a host of stars there. He will be hoping that security has improved.
Source: The Times
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