Editor’s Note
As Baselworld opens today, we look back at some of the most audacious heists in the fair’s history, a reminder that where great value gathers, great risk often follows.
Today, the Basel watch and jewelry fair, Baselworld, opened its doors. This year too, thieves will try to make their mark. Baselworld is an El Dorado for international organized crime. The total value of the goods exhibited at the watch and jewelry fair is a secret, but the billion mark is easily exceeded. Every year, thefts or attempted thefts occur in the Basel exhibition halls. The public never hears about most of them. Exhibitors and insurers typically handle these matters discreetly themselves. Incidents only become known when Basel investigators bring the perpetrators before the Basel Criminal Court. They have succeeded in doing this several times. The following are the five cases with the largest hauls.
A thief of Balkan origin smashed an exhibition display case in the middle of the afternoon and made off with jewelry worth approximately 13 million Swiss francs. A stand employee tried to hold the robber back but failed. The jewelry robber then continued his escape across the exhibition hall, stumbled, and lost most of his loot. With a single diamond ring worth 2.5 million francs, he made it to the exit of the hall, where he was arrested by police. The Basel public prosecutor’s office described the robber’s actions as “strange.”
In 2011, a group of perpetrators from Serbia-Montenegro succeeded in making a haul of 8.2 million Swiss francs.
They posed as exhibition builders and had obtained corresponding IDs. Before the theft, they adjusted the angle of a surveillance camera to proceed unseen. The main perpetrator opened the display case during the exhibition and stole the watches and jewelry pieces. The main perpetrator was later arrested in Poland and was sentenced by the Basel Criminal Court in February of this year to seven years in prison. His accomplices remain at large.
A quintet of internationally active professional thieves committed a trick theft and, with little effort, made a haul of three million Swiss francs. Only one ring and two diamonds were needed. The method was simple: One of the thieves broke open the display case with a screwdriver while two of his accomplices blocked the view of the action. The thieves sold the two diamonds in Munich. Only one of them could be caught and brought to trial in Basel in 1997. The jewelry thief first had to serve a prison sentence in the USA. His identity was known to the Basel authorities because they had been informed in an anonymous letter about his arrival in Basel and his intentions. The man was sentenced to two and a quarter years in prison and 15 years of expulsion from the country. His accomplices were never caught, and the stones were never found.
Seven years ago, it leaked from the otherwise very tight-lipped circle of trade fair employees that a broken-open safe had been found at the opening of the fair. The contents, jewelry worth 1.4 million Swiss francs waiting to be presented at the fair, had disappeared. Police remained tight-lipped regarding the perpetrators, crime scene, and sequence of events. Neither the perpetrators nor the loot have ever been heard from again. It is assumed that this coup was successful.
Two professional jewelry thieves from Montenegro, presumably also members of the loose criminal association Pink Panther, stole two watches worth 600,000 Swiss francs at Baselworld in 2006. One day later, while an Interpol manhunt for them was already underway, they continued stealing at the “Salon International de la Haute Horlogerie” and looted nine watches worth 652,000 Swiss francs. Shortly thereafter, Basel police arrested the two. They received prison sentences of under two years and 15 years of expulsion from the country. The sentence was only so low because one of the two perpetrators helped recover the jewelry.