French police are searching for a thief who took jewels worth beween €2m and €3m (£1.7m and £2.55m) from an exclusive Paris store and scooted off before the alarm could be raised.
The man made his getaway on an electric scooter after reportedly threatening staff at the Chaumet jewellers near the Champs-Élysées.
CCTV shows the grey-haired thief, wearing a light-grey suit, white shirt and tie, arriving at the store about 5.10pm on Tuesday. Shortly afterwards he was filmed leaving the shop with a white bag of jewels and gemstones and departing on a green scooter that he had left parked outside.
Staff told police the lone man had at first pretended to be a customer asking to see various pieces of expensive jewellery before drawing a knife. No one was injured in the robbery.
Jeanne d’Hauteserre, the mayor of Paris’s 8th arrondissement where the robbery took place, described it as “mind-boggling, daring, unprecedented and regrettable”. A police officer told Le Parisien newspaper the thief had got away with a “monumental” haul.
The jewellers, founded in 1780 and most famous for its flagship store on the Place Vendôme near the Ritz Hotel, was previously robbed in 2009, when €1.9m of precious stones were stolen.
The French police’s BRB anti-robbery unit is overseeing the investigation into the latest armed robbery.
Potential witnesses at a nearby cafe told Le Parisien they saw and heard nothing. Many were reportedly distracted by the presence of one-time screen hard man and martial arts specialist Jean-Claude Van Damme at the nearby opticians.