THE armed man who fled the Carlton International hotel in Cannes at around noon on July 28th with jewelry worth €103m ($ 137m) pulled off the biggest heist in French history in a cool minute and a half. The gem-encrusted rings, earrings and watches he stole belong to Lev Leviev, a Soviet-born Israeli diamond and property mogul, and had been on display in a widely advertised exhibition at the hotel. That the jewels were so easily swiped has raised questions about how seriously security was taken. Guards were thin on the ground, and the police apparently did not even know about the exhibition.This posh stretch of the Riviera is a magnet for the rich and beautiful—and, correspondingly, jewel thieves. Alfred Hitchcock set much of his 1955 film “To Catch a Thief”—about a reformed cat burglar played by Cary Grant—in the Carlton. The area has been plagued of late. In May pieces worth about €1m that Chopard, a Swiss jeweller and watchmaker, intended to lend to actresses attending the Cannes film festival were taken from a hotel-room safe. The next week a €2m diamond necklace belonging to another Swiss jeweller was stolen after a star-studded party at a hotel in Cap…
The Economist: Europe
