The 47-carat diamond ring was so large that it sat in the hand on two fingers and, in addition, the stone rotated on itself. The exclusive piece is valued at four and a half million euros, said its owner on Wednesday afternoon, a Russian citizen in her 70s who, accompanied by a daughter, was the victim of a robbery in Terminal 1 of the airport in El Prat de Barcelona when they waited to check in in the business queue of the Emirates company.
The victims were confused for a second and a man, a habitual airport thief, approached stealthily and without the women realizing he took a small white Louis Vuitton cabin suitcase on which they had left a Hermès, Birkin model bag. , inlaid with gold and brilliants. Distributed between the suitcase and the bag, the woman kept jewelry and watches valued at eight and a half million euros, in addition to $10,000 and another 10,200 euros in cash.
The robbery was fast, silent and stealthy, as the numerous thieves who operate daily at El Prat airport act. The victim filed the complaint at the airport's Mossos d'Esquadra police station at half past seven in the evening. She was not confident in recovering the pieces, but the woman herself made a detailed inventory to the police of the jewelry and watches that she carried in the two bags, and their approximate value. In addition to that ring, the great jewel of the collection, the thieves took two watches, a Chopard for about 45,000 euros and a Bulgari for about 800,000. The loot contained two exclusively designed diamond brooches, a Chanel valued at more than 750,000 euros and another in the shape of a swan. Some diamond earrings valued at one million euros, another ring worth half a million and a Tiffany bracelet worth about 250,000 euros and a Versace diamond chain worth another 250,000 euros completed the stolen stash.
The woman, accompanied by her daughter, was returning to Russia after a vacation. Both boarded the plane without much hope of recovering their jewelry.
From that moment on, the investigation unit of the Mossos that works in the airport complex began to work. If there is something good about El Prat, which undoubtedly has many good things, it is a video surveillance system based on high-quality cameras that do not leave a single space to be controlled. But you have to know how to use them and control the area that each one watches.
In a few minutes, the investigators located the exact moment of the robbery and the individual who was calmly advancing through Terminal 1 dragging a white Louis Vuitton, with an Hermès attached to the top.
That face familiar to them. The suspect joined another individual in fleeing and together they quietly moved to the third floor of the airport parking lot, where a rental Ford Focus had been parked.
The two are old acquaintances of the Mossos at the airport. They are specialized in careless theft of bags and suitcases. They operate in airports throughout Spain. In fact, one of them has a restraining order in force at the Adolfo Suárez airport in Madrid, from the end of last year.
In Barcelona they had never been arrested because they were so bad, that the agents in plain clothes or in uniform guessed their intentions before stealing and threw them out of the El Prat terminals every once in a while. But on Wednesday they were crowned, starring in a theft that not even in their wildest dreams could they imagine.
What's more, there are meticulous and prepared thieves who spend years planning a robbery of the magnitude that these two guys carried out on Wednesday in El Prat, and they have no guarantee of success.
With their bags and suitcases on their backs, the two individuals moved to the car and headed home. They loaded absolutely all their personal belongings, and distributed the stolen loot between bags, putting some of the pieces on top.
They were surely euphoric, but without even imagining the value of what they had on them, because without changing cars, they filled the tank with gasoline and got on the AP-7 towards France with the probable intention of reaching their country, Serbia. .
By then, the airport investigators had already communicated to the rest of the Mossos with the details of the vehicle in which the thieves had fled. They suspected that they would have changed cars, but the surprise was great when two and a half hours later, a traffic patrol identified the car at the height of Salt and stopped them.
The two guys didn't even flinch. They collaborated at all times. One of the men had a Swedish passport and the other a Polish one, although they are initially listed as Kosovar. The detainees were transferred to the dungeons of the Girona police station, where yesterday they expected the judge to disqualify himself in favor of the El Prat magistrate so that the airport mossos are the ones to continue with the report.
The jewels remained yesterday in the bunker of the Girona police station and in principle they will be transferred to the airport. The victim could be located when she was flying back to her house, since she had a telephone line in business class. The woman was grateful and surprised by the police efficiency.
Despite the astronomical amount of the stolen pieces, the events carried out by the two men are still a theft. Both will be released when they go to court. Without knowing it, they staged the robbery of the century, but they acted as bunglers.
