Editor’s Note
This article details a high-value theft complaint filed in Paris by a former Guinean presidential candidate. The alleged crime involves a diamond appraised at 45 million euros.
A former candidate in Guinea’s presidential election has filed a complaint in Paris for the theft of a diamond she values at 45 million euros from a Parisian hotel, it has been learned.
Two men posing as Russians met Marie-Madeleine Dioubaté on Monday in a hotel in Paris’s 8th arrondissement to appraise the diamond. After evaluation, they gave her a document certifying that the piece was worth 45 million euros, according to a police source.
But in the meantime, using a sleight of hand trick well-known to fraudsters and investigators, the two men had stolen the real diamond and replaced it with a pale copy, detailed a source close to the case, confirming information from radio station Europe 1.
When the victim realized this, the two men had fled. She filed a complaint.
the police source emphasized.
A preliminary investigation for organized gang theft has been opened, according to the Paris prosecutor’s office. The Brigade de Répression du Banditisme (BRB – Banditry Suppression Brigade) is in charge of the investigation.
Marie-Madeleine Dioubaté, from the Guinean Ecologists Party, was the only female candidate in Guinea’s 2015 presidential election, which was won by the incumbent president Alpha Condé.