Geneva: he steals millions of francs from a secure box

E. is a Geneva investor living happy days in the canton. On March 25, he became disillusioned by going to the company where he and his mother have been renting a secure box on the docks for years. By opening his armored locker number 538 containing gold, jewelry, watches and precious metals, the man discovers that all their values ​​estimated at several million francs have disappeared.

According to our information, investigators are now holding a suspect, arrested in Zurich with false Italian papers. This Serb, born in 1979 and wanted by several criminal authorities, was immediately transferred to a German prison due to robbery.

Putty to hide the “work”

For his misdeeds, the inmate, who used up to 8 aliases (!) during his criminal career, allegedly posed as a new Italian client interested in entrusting his assets to a secure company safe in Geneva. He then allegedly took advantage of his access to the safe room to specifically loot E.’s by breaking the internal locking system, without being worried.

According to a police report, the armored door of the safe was closed and glued with putty to hide the break-in: “No alarm was triggered and no break-in on the strong room was observed, suggesting that the thief had access to the vault.” Angry, E. “believing the goods entrusted to a safe place” immediately filed a complaint. His mother, who lives abroad, will do the same in August.

Questioned in April, the director of the Geneva branch quickly suspected this new Italian client. The latter rented a safe at the lowest rate for a very short duration and in the same room as E. The suspect went there three times in succession and never returned.

On video surveillance images dated February, we can see him entering the secure site, a cap on his head and a wheeled suitcase in his hand. Duration of his visits: each time around twenty minutes.

Contacted, the lawyer of E., M^e Rodolphe Gautier, does not hide his astonishment “in view of the elements, the lightness of the company is confusing: verification of the identity and integrity of the defective client, non-existent monitoring, safe easy to force, undiscovered break-in for weeks. So much so that we cannot exclude internal complicity. But rather than taking responsibility, the company still risks pointing the finger at the victim.”

The investigation is underway before the Public Prosecutor’s Office.

Hotel in the Nations district

Last March, the Zurich police arrested the suspect and another compatriot during a check while driving an Opel registered in Germany. Geneva investigators will subsequently discover that he rented a room for two a month earlier in a Geneva hotel on Place des Nations. Which would correspond to the time of the flight.

Arrested in Zurich, the Serb with the suitcase could not be handed over to Geneva justice. Indeed, this man, unfavorably known to the police since 1995, is said to have committed a hold-up in a jewelry store in Frankfurt in 2013. He is therefore currently detained in Germany to be tried there. He risks a 10-year prison sentence for this robbery.

The man is also the subject of an arrest warrant issued by Italy for vehicle thefts and a burglary in 2007 in Veneto. He must serve a prison sentence of 5 and a half years there. When he was arrested in German-speaking Switzerland, he was in possession of counterfeit transalpine papers. And bought in Italy for 560 francs, declares its owner.

Note that the Geneva safe company has filed a complaint against unknown person for the property damage suffered on the safe. Damage of 5000 fr.

The company spokesperson reacts: “It is not justified to criticize us for an alleged careless identification of the suspected burglar when concluding the rental contract. Identification also took place in the present case. We do not see how this identification, which allowed the police to identify the alleged burglar, would have been incomplete.

What about the hypothesis of internal complicity formulated by the complainants? “We cannot exclude complicity with the financier who alleges that he had values ​​estimated at more than 3 million francs in the secure box rented by his mother,” concludes the spokesperson.

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