Bozur
Amicus
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Post by Bozur on May 16, 2009 22:31:17 GMT -5
Arrest of 2 ‘Pink Panthers’ May Shed Light on Heists
François Mori/Associated Press Shoppers in Paris can enter Harry Winston only by appointment in the wake of a highly publicized robbery in December.
By DOREEN CARVAJAL Published: May 15, 2009
PARIS — The wanted posters for Zoran Kostic offer clashing images of a fugitive who investigators believe may hold the key to cracking a network of globe-hopping jewel thieves with a taste for chunky diamonds and Patek Philippe Swiss watches.
His Interpol poster lists his eye color as black — or green. And Mr. Kostic’s photos veer from the dark, brooding looks of a Heathcliff with tousled hair to the grim visage of a newly shorn truck driver. A German reward poster, offering 5,000 euros, or $6,800, shows a softer side: a man who might be a prosperous banker in suit and tie, peering intently through a window of a luxury jewelry store, Wempe.
That man in the window had managed to outwit and elude the authorities since early 2003, until the international hunt finally led to the two-star Hotel Utrillo, a short walk from the Moulin Rouge in Paris, where this week the French police arrested Mr. Kostic, 39, and Nikola Ivanovic, 36, with their Swiss watches.
It was a moment for investigators to savor; many had gathered for an unusual two-day conference in Monaco in March to share information about the group, which they called the Pink Panthers, with representatives from 16 countries, including the United States, Japan and the United Arab Emirates.
They pored over information about a shifting collection of about 200 men from Montenegro and Serbia, most with military or athletic backgrounds, who carried out reconnaissance missions by methodically looking for “soft targets.”
The authorities say they believe that the Pink Panthers have snatched jewels worth more than $130 million in swift attacks that extend from Dubai to Geneva, Tokyo, Paris and Monaco. Their nickname was invented by British investigators when one suspect there hid a $657,000 blue diamond in a jar of cream, a tactic lifted from one of the “Pink Panther” films starring Peter Sellers.
But when thieves struck on May 5 in Switzerland at L’Émeraude, a jewelry store in Lausanne, police investigators were able to raise a rapid alarm, passing on warnings to French authorities with a hunch that the robbers might run toward France.
Stéphane Volper, an inspector with the judicial police in Lausanne, said a bold approach had become the signature of Pink Panther thieves, who operated with impunity because they were accustomed to staging robberies and then heading back to Serbia undetected, using counterfeit passports.
In 2007, for instance, thieves struck the Ciribelli shop in Monte Carlo, a robbery in which Mr. Kostic is a suspect. To this day, investigators remain baffled by the choice of getaway car.
“They escaped in a yellow Fiat,” said Olivier Jude, inspector commander at the Monaco Police Department. “Now that was unusual. Then they abandoned the car and left inside their fingerprints.”
For all their detective work across borders, the police know little about Mr. Kostic, who was born in the south of Montenegro in Cetinje, a city of about 18,000 people. But they consider him a “big fish” because, they say, he has figured in more than 20 high-profile robberies and may ultimately provide information about the methods of the Pink Panthers.
So far, according to the French police, Mr. Kostic and his accomplice, Mr. Ivanovic, are not saying much. But they have admitted to the recent robbery in Lausanne, said Hélène Dupif, the commissioner of the organized-crime police unit in Paris.
Ms. Dupif said she considered the members of the Pink Panthers extremely violent. “These are men who are really strong, who come in with handguns and order people to the ground and scream at them in a language they don’t understand,” she said. “They terrorize people, and some victims have been seeing therapists for a long time because of them.”
Almost 40 men tied to the network have been arrested on theft charges in several countries, including Japan, where well-dressed robbers tear-gassed employees in a jewelry store. Within three minutes they had vanished with a sack of diamonds and the Comtesse de Vendôme, a 125-carat necklace of 116 diamonds. Soon after the Pink Panther police meeting in Monaco, one of the suspects in the Japanese case, Rifat Hadziahmetovic, was arrested on March 18 in Cyprus by the local police, who discovered that he was also wanted by Interpol. In February, the authorities arrested two Serbs, according to Ms. Dupif.
So when the Swiss authorities called after the heist in Lausanne, French investigators used information from the earlier arrests to monitor areas where Mr. Kostic and Mr. Ivanovic might turn up. The hunch proved true; they were spotted in the rather unluxurious Pigalle neighborhood of Paris, notorious for its sex shops and red-light district.
When they found them, according to Ms. Dupif, they still had two Patek Philippe watches from the Lausanne robbery. She noted that lately the Panthers had been shifting from diamonds to watches, which may be easier to resell.
So far investigators have not been able to determine what happened to all the stolen diamonds.
But officials are not certain whether the network was responsible for the most highly publicized robbery in recent months. In early December, the Pink Panthers fell under suspicion when four men — three disguised as women with long tresses, sunglasses and winter scarves — struck the fabled Harry Winston jewelry store on Avenue Montaigne in Paris.
In less than 15 minutes they were gone, carrying sacks of diamonds. But the Panthers are known for even greater speed — their robberies usually take less than three minutes — leading some investigators to question whether they were responsible for the holdup.
Initially, the police counted up the plunder at more than $80 million. Since then Harry Winston has started collecting insurance payments, but it has lowered the value of the cost of the diamonds to $32 million, revealing in its annual report that it will receive about $20 million as an insurance settlement.
Today its Paris store has become even more exclusive.
Now the store is open only for private appointments with customers. On a street corner facing the door stands a “watcher” in a suit, a communications cord dangling from his ear to relay information to employees inside. www.nytimes.com/2009/05/16/world/europe/16heist.html?ref=global-home
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Bozur
Amicus
Posts: 5,515
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Post by Bozur on Aug 18, 2009 18:45:29 GMT -5
Balkans' Pink Panther jewel thieves smash their way into myth
Members of the unglamorous gang, which has hit boutiques in Paris, London and Dubai, are heroes to some in their war-ravaged native Serbia. 'I hope you rob the U.S. Federal Reserve,' one fan writes.
By Jeffrey Fleishman
July 29, 2009
Reporting from Belgrade, Serbia - So let's get this straight. A guy in the raspberry business from western Serbia smashes and grabs his way through a heist eight time zones away in Tokyo and scoots off past shopping centers and sushi bars with a $31-million necklace known as the Countess of Vendome.
It happens.
Djordjije Rasovic graced arrest warrants, a thief with brazen nerves, part of an international Balkan crime gang known as the Pink Panthers. He and one of his accomplices, Snowy, another name too whimsical for the harsh impulses of the former Yugoslavia, brought a bit of high jinks to a land haunted by war criminals and atrocities.
The Panthers, a collection of 150 to 200 Balkan bad guys and a few women, have stolen about $140 million in jewelry and watches over the last decade from 100 luxury shops around the world, including boutiques in Paris, London, Monaco and Dubai.
They come in rough, swinging hammers and axes, shattering glass, flashing semiautomatic pistols and an occasional grenade, and vanishing with gems in satchels lined with toilet paper to prevent scratching.
They're untailored and uncoiffed, preferring black leather jackets and ball caps to cashmere and cuff links, a kind of "Ocean's 11" minus the panache. But they're disciplined and fluent in many languages, and they strike with precision.
Their heists usually clock in at 90 seconds, and when one of them gets arrested, like, say, Rasovic, another takes his place in an organization that has grown wiser since the early days, when its members were so brash they didn't bother to conceal their faces.
"They've become more than pure criminals, they're heroes," said Dragan Ilic, a morning radio talk show host in Belgrade, the Serbian capital. "They're violent but they haven't killed anyone. It's as if they're saying, 'We can beat the technologically superior West with our raw power and intelligence.' They're feeding the Western myth of the dark, tribal Balkans -- these criminals coming from those wars and woods."
Panther lore has crept into chat rooms and elsewhere in cyberspace. One of them skied in the French Alps before knocking off a nearby jewelry store; others case shops for months, buying watches and trinkets and befriending managers.
On the website of Blic, a popular Serbian tabloid, a man giving his name as Markus wrote: "I hope somebody from the Pink Panthers corporation reads this message and invites me to join their team. You have become myth and you're still alive. I'm crossing my fingers for you. I hope you rob the U.S. Federal Reserve."
The Panthers lead hidden lives among Europe's Balkan diaspora of refugees, former paramilitary fighters, opportunists and laborers who watched Yugoslavia splinter throughout the 1990s. Working in hospitals, bars and restaurants, they're summoned by messages to join comrades and hatch robberies on streets that glow with designer names.
Some law enforcement officials suggest the Panthers work for the Italian or Russian mafias; others say they're an independent syndicate whose money is sent to the Balkans to buy real estate.
They've become so proficient that they've inspired copycats, and the aura of the Pink Panthers lingers around crime scenes like the infectious theme from the 1963 movie that is their namesake. Scotland Yard came up with the nickname after police found a blue diamond ring worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in a jar of face cream -- similar to a scene from "The Pink Panther."
Peter Sellers' Inspector Clouseau would be stymied by the likes of Dragan Mikic, a former soldier, taxi driver, used-car salesman and business manager who, with two accomplices, headed for the Courchevel ski resort in France and walked into the Doux jewelry store at 11:30 a.m. on Jan. 31, 2003. Dressed like tourists and brandishing fake guns, the thieves made off with jewelry valued at several million dollars. Mikic was arrested the next day after a clerk identified him while he was buying a train ticket with a 500-euro note.
Described as one of the group's masterminds, Mikic rarely goes quietly to his cell. In 2003, he escaped from a French courthouse. He was captured, but two years later he was sprung from prison when fellow Panthers fired Kalashnikov rifles at guard towers while he hustled down a ladder. In 2008, he was convicted and sentenced in absentia for the Courchevel robbery and heists in Saint-Tropez, Cannes and Biarritz.
"It's audacity," said Monaco criminal investigation chief Andre Muhlberger. "Difficulty doesn't stop them. . . . When you've lived through the atrocities of war, and especially a civil war, you don't have the same fears as you or me."
Most of the Pink Panthers are Serbs, and most of them come from the city of Nis, an amalgam of block-style buildings and flaking Ottoman-era facades rising from farm fields at the foot of a mountain. Former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic's warped nationalism resonated in Nis for years, but wars and sanctions hobbled the town's big employers -- TV manufacturers and the textile and metal industries -- and Serbia's third-largest city quickly became less enchanted with "Slobo."
Night in downtown Nis these days is forlorn in the way of a traveling carnival: lights, but no splendor; a gritty whirl of cafes and the scent of popcorn sold in paper bags.
"We in Nis used to be fashionable. We copied Italian fashion and spent holidays in Spain," said a cafe owner who, fearing retribution, asked not to be named. "But once the wars started and the borders closed, we were lost to the outside world and all we could do was copy Belgrade. So we turned to turbo-folk music, guns and the chic of the criminal class."
The names from Nis on Interpol warrants are tongue-twisters for the cops pursuing them: Mladen Lazarevic and Milan Ljepoja, wanted for heists in Dubai and Liechtenstein; Milos Jovanovic, wanted in Liechtenstein; Bojana Mitic, a woman whose mug shot, long hair framing her face, suggests a Bonnie linked to a bunch of Clydes. Her cellphone, police say, is full of interesting numbers. She's wanted in a $3-million Dubai robbery captured on video that shows two sedans squealing over broken glass.
Reporting from Belgrade, Serbia - It's a forbidden glamour the Balkans have long relished.
"They're creating chaos. It's not something I would do, but they're rocking," said Marko Petrovic, a university student studying environmental protection who, on a recent night, strolled through Nis with enough money to buy a drink for himself but not for a girl, if he met one. "They're the main topic in coffee shops. Everybody talks about them. Some of them are from Nis. What they're doing is stunning, amazing and awesome."
The Balkans have a history of spawning international thieves, who often collaborate despite ethnic animosities between Serb, Croat and Muslim. Some were assassins tied to Yugoslavia's secret security forces. Throughout wars and sanctions, the country relied on corruption and smuggling as criminals and politicians -- sometimes one and the same -- negotiated deals over plum brandy and cigars.
One of the best-known outlaws was Zeljko Raznatovic, a Montenegrin Serb known as Arkan who, before he became a paramilitary commander with a penchant for war crimes, was wanted across the continent for robbery, murder and escaping a number of European prisons. Arkan embodied Serb nationalism, once kept a tiger as his mascot and was gunned down in the lobby of a Belgrade luxury hotel -- a messy end to a combustible man.
The Pink Panthers are the next wave. Police say some members of the group fought in the Balkan wars. The coterie from Nis would have memories of NATO bombing and Serb refugees fleeing Kosovo, but officials say today's Panthers are infused with less patriotic fervor than Arkan was, though they share his brashness, cunning and fondness for making mischief in foreign lands.
"The 1990s were an ideal time for creating criminals in the Balkans," said Dobrivoje Radovanovic, a Belgrade criminologist. "There became a breed of world-class criminals. The more aggressive and stupid, however, became war criminals. . . . With the Pink Panthers, the public has fallen for false images and mythology."
That power is alluring. Sasa Lukic wrote of his fascination with the Panthers on Blic's website: "I admire such people, who are not like me. I wake every morning at 6 a.m. like a monkey. I'm a welder breathing in exhaust for a salary I spend in two days."
At least 10 people, including Zoran Kostic, an alleged ringleader, have been arrested over the last 18 months, mostly in Europe. Gilbert Lafaye, a public prosecutor in Chambery, France, compared the organization's network to a global "spider web. . . . You pull one string, and you find a group of others."
That is how, according to police, Rasovic, the raspberry guy, ended up in the Ginza shopping district of Tokyo in 2004 with a forged passport and big ambitions.
Police say Rasovic, Snowy (real name: Snezana Panajotovic) and Aleksandar Radulovic had cased the Le Supre-Diamant Couture de Maki store, pretending to be buyers. On the day of the robbery, police say, Snowy waited outside while Rasovic and Radulovic entered the store. One of the robbers distracted a shop assistant; the other sprayed a second salesperson with pepper spray. Glass cases were smashed and the thieves fled with jewels, including the Countess of Vendome necklace, which is studded with 116 diamonds, including a 125-carat oval center stone.
Rasovic was sentenced to 6 1/2 years in 2007 for the heist, but he, Snowy and Radulovic have won an appeal for a new trial. Snowy said she knew nothing of the crime and Rasovic testified that he was paid $100,000 to stage a robbery and that "the Japanese are the real thieves," said a Serbian law enforcement official who asked not to be named. Rasovic's defense suggested the robbery was an inside job arranged to collect insurance money.
The Serbian official believes the Pink Panthers may be controlled by larger forces: "These criminals are from small provincial towns in Serbia. You need big money for these kinds of crimes, and they aim for the most expensive jewels on the planet. In my opinion, they're pawns and stool pigeons."
The Countess of Vendome has not been found.
jeffrey.fleishman@latimes.com
Special correspondent Devorah Lauter in Paris contributed to this report. www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-balkan-panthers29-2009jul29,0,315138.story
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