Gun-toting thieves steal up to US$16 million worth of watches and jewellery from Piaget store in Paris

At lunchtime on Wednesday, two men and a woman walked into the Piaget store in Paris’ Rue de la Paix, situated just around the corner from the Place Vendôme. The trio were described by eyewitnesses as being “smarty dressed” – the men wearing grey suits and the woman in a green dress. Once inside the store, one of the party suddenly produced a handgun equipped with a silencer. The boutique workers and other customers were ordered to lie on the floor in the back of the store, while one of the staffers was forced at gunpoint to open the locked jewellery display cases and the safe.

A similar robbery occurred nearby three months ago. Back in May, the nearby Bulgari flagship shop on Place Vendôme was also targeted in broad daylight by three armed robbers who escaped from the scene of the crime on two motorbikes. Another attack also took place last year in the French capital, when armed thieves robbed a Chanel store.

In an interview with French TV, Sandrine Marcot of France’s jewellery and watches union admitted the number of raids was worrying: “Even though it’s true the level has dramatically fallen over the years, since the end of Covid in the past couple of years, the number of robberies and burglaries has been growing.”

It’s a worrying trend for the city that had made a concerted effort in the recent years to crack down on watch crime. Last year, Paris police commissioner Julien Herbaut claimed that luxury watch robbery fell by 44 per cent in the summer of 2022 in comparison to the year before, despite a major increase in tourists. Herbaut team caught 175 watch thieves between January and August, up from 85 over the same period in 2021.