Kuwait Times

Published Date: October 22, 2008

MONACO: Over the past decade the "Pink Panthers" gang has pulled off a daring series of multi-million-euro jewel heists at exclusive addresses in Alpine tax havens, Mediterranean resorts and Gulf monarchies. Now, thanks to Interpol's global fingerprint database and a sharp-eyed traffic cop, two Balkan suspects have been arrested and linked with at least a dozen armed robberies in Switzerland, Monaco, Liechtenstein and Dubai.

The crimes were meticulously planned and vastly profitable-worthy of the gentlemen jewel thieves of the Peter Sellers movies from which their nickname came-but the pair's downfall last week was terribly banal. Last Wednesday, a Monaco police officer called to a simple traffic accident recognized a 27-year-old Serb and a 31-year-old Bosnian as suspects linked to a June 2007 jewel heist in the Mediterranean principality. "You could say we got lucky, but the arrests wouldn't have been possible without the har
d work of identification and analysis done at an international level," said Monaco's chief investigator Christophe Haget.

The suspects, one of whom is thought to be a senior gang member, could not have known it at the time, but their problems began in June 2007 when they left their fingerprints at the scene of a heist in a Monaco jewelers. Detectives from the international police organization Interpol, working for a special unit set up to deal with the Pink Panthers, were able to compare these traces to files from several law enforcement agencies and to distribute photographs of the suspects. The pair have now been linked to
at least seven jobs in Switzerland worth 1.8 million euros (2.4 million dollars) since 2005, another in Liechtenstein in 2006 and a spectacular 11.2-million-euro raid in Dubai in April 2007.

Police believe they were planning another theft when they were caught. Technically they are being held on suspicion of carrying passports that were not their own, judicial officials said, but Monaco expects to extradite them to Switzerland or Liechtenstein to face armed robbery charges. Many more members of the gang, which is thought to involve up to 200 thieves drawn mainly from the former Yugoslavia, are still at large. "There's a hard core group and individuals who move in and out depending on the natur
e of the jobs," said Haget.

Interpol's Pink Panther cell was set up in July 2007 in response to the gang's increasingly daring and lucrative crime spree. British police gave the gang their nickname after finding a blue diamond ring hidden in a jar of face cream, like the "The Pink Panther" gem in the 1963 film comedy of the same name starring David Niven and Peter Sellers. The robbers apparently liked the joke, and on several occasions witnesses have reported them carrying out raids dressed in trademark pink shirts. Police weren't la
ughing, though. In just under a decade jewelers around the world lost more than 110 million euros worth of stock.

They come in force, smash into the store, smash all the glass cabinets and are gone in a matter of seconds. What makes them unique, and effective, is the precision," Haget said. "Nothing is left to chance, especially their escape plan," he explained. "They conduct careful surveillance of their targets, and adapt perfectly to their environment. In luxury neighborhoods they travel in chauffeur-driven limousines. In Japan they ride bicycles and wear anti-pollution masks." Gang members protect their identitie
s by travelling on genuine passports issued to other people, making them difficult to track as they dot around the world. Nevertheless, around 30 of them are now behind bars. - AFP