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Thieves again ram-raid luxury shop in France

Thieves on Thursday smashed a car into a luxury store for the third time this year in the same French city to steal handbags and other valuables, a police source said.

Published: 25 May 2023 10:56 CEST

Thieves again ram-raid luxury shop in France

This photograph taken on May 25, 2023 in Lille, northeastern France, shows the sign of the Hermes luxury store on the prestigious Rue Grande-Chaussee, where thieves used a car to ram the security gate and gain entry into the store. (Photo by Sameer Al-Doumy / AFP)

The burglary at dawn from the Hermes shop in the northeastern city of Lille comes just days after another store belonging to Louis Vuitton was targeted some 100 metres down the road on Wednesday last week.

The Louis Vuitton shop was itself already burgled in January.

The thieves on Thursday made off with clothes, jewelry and handbags, but part of the loot was abandoned on site, the source said.

They also left behind two cars, including the one used to ram-raid the shop, but police were on the lookout for a third vehicle used, the source added.

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French billionaire Bernard Arnault probed over Courchevel money laundering

The probe concerns their activities in Courchevel, a ski resort in the French Alps known for being a playground for the ultra-rich, they said late on Thursday.

The French economy ministry’s financial intelligence unit is leading the investigation, but has yet to determine whether any crime had been committed, a source close to the investigation told AFP.

French daily Le Monde, citing the Tracfin financial intelligence unit, reported that the 55-year old Russian billionaire had acquired 14 housing units from a single seller in 2018 for €16 million in a complex deal involving companies based in France, Luxembourg and Cyprus.

Although he is believed to be the buyer, Sarkisov’s name appears nowhere on the books of the company carrying out the purchase.

The company, called La Fleche, is believed to have bought three more real estate units from a second company which, it turns out, also belonged to Sarkisov.

The sale of the real estate to himself allowed the Russian to pocket a capital gain of €1.2 million, according to the paper.

Arnault — who runs luxury empire LVMH and is the world’s second-richest person after Elon Musk according to Forbes — is suspected of lending €18.3 million euros to Sarkisov for the deal.

He is then believed to have acquired La Fleche, effectively becoming the owner of the real estate portfolio.

The ownership change could have been designed “to hide the exact origin of the funds”, Le Monde quoted a Tracfin document as saying, as well as the identity of the “ultimate beneficiary”.

Investigators believe Sarkisov made two million euros from the operation, but they were still in the dark how much he had paid for the loan.

Contacted by AFP, LVMH declined to comment.

Le Monde, however, quoted a spokesman as saying that the operation had been “carried out with the strictest observance of the law”.

The paper also cited people close to Sarkisov as saying that the capital gain was “just a few hundred of thousands of euros”, and that the Russian had not been involved personally.

Le Monde said that according to “family lore”, Arnault has a special connection to Courchevel because he learned to ski there as a child and where he owns a mansion and a luxury hotel.

Hotel prices in the resort can reach several tens of thousands of euros per night, the paper noted.

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