WORLD> Europe
Reward offered for help in huge Paris jewel theft
(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-12-10 07:50

PARIS – The insurer Lloyds of London offered a reward of up to $1 million Tuesday for information leading to the recovery of diamond rings, necklaces and watches stolen in a $108 million robbery from the Harry Winston boutique in Paris last week.


Press photographers take photos through the gate of the entrance of the Harry Winston jewelry store near the Champs-Elysees in Paris, Friday Dec. 5, 2008. Armed robbers, some dressed in drag, made off Thursday, Dec. 4, 2008 with euro80 million (US$100 million) in loot from a lightning-fast jewelry store theft in central Paris, in what police Friday called one of France's costliest jewel heists. [Agencies] 

S.W. Associates, a company working with Lloyds, said the exact compensation would be calculated according to the amount of jewelry recovered.

A spokeswoman for the New York-based jeweler, Rhonda Barnat, declined to comment on the reward or provide any additional details about Thursday's robbery.

Four gunmen, included three disguised as women, made off with the jewelry at the luxury boutique on one of Paris' ritziest streets, the fashionable Avenue Montaigne, just as night fell and before the store closed.

After going up to the first-floor showroom, where they emptied display cases and safes, the thieves "left through the main door, in the same way they came in," said Isabelle Montagne, spokeswoman for the Paris prosecutor's office. The whole operation took about a quarter of an hour, Montagne said in a telephone interview.

Christmas shoppers were strolling the street, off the famed Champs-Elysees Avenue, as the robbery was taking place.

A police official said the thieves called some of the store employees by their names and even rattled off one of the worker's home address, in an apparent attempt to intimidate them. The official declined to be named because the investigation is ongoing.

Montagne said no arrests have been made.

Thursday's robbery came a year after a similar but smaller one at Harry Winston's Paris boutique, in which thieves made off with $28.4 million in gems. A reward was offered then, to no avail. The theft remains unsolved.

The 76-year-old company says celebrities such as Gwyneth Paltrow, Elizabeth Taylor and Madonna, and even Queen Elizabeth II of Britain, have worn its jewels. Today, the store and its famous rings play a role in many engagement fantasies.