The Kardashian case had already highlighted the preponderant place of Antwerp in Belgium in the business of reselling stolen jewelery in France. The Franco-Belgian dragnet, baptized “Gold Rush”, which took place on May 14 and 15 confirms this.
According to the investigations of the Versailles Research Section, the team of Serbian receivers they have just dismantled made more than 45 round trips between the Paris suburbs and the Belgian city in 18 months to dispose of jewelry and watches stolen during burglaries committed on French territory.
A Drancy couple at the heart of the investigation
At the origin of the investigation, in October 2021, the actions of a couple from Drancy (Seine-Saint-Denis) who attracted the attention of the gendarmes. He is Serbian, she is Romanian and these two forties are already known to justice for acts of concealment. The first surveillances confirm that their pavilion in the Jorissen district receives many suspicious visits and the spinning mills systematically lead to Antwerp.
Some of the loot seized by investigators
© DR
What motivates the specialized interregional jurisdiction (JIRS) of Paris to launch an international cooperation with the Belgian federal police and to request the support of the central office for the fight against itinerant delinquency (OCLDI) and the observation monitoring group of Île -de-France (GOSIF).
Real loot has been seized
On May 14, a Sunday, the investigators witnessed in Drancy the morning departure of a couple aboard a Mercedes bound for Antwerp. There, a welcoming committee is organized by the Belgian PJ at a local jeweler. Thirty watches, fifty jewels and 30,000 euros are seized.
A dozen watches and fifty jewels were discovered in various caches
© DR
At the same time, the gendarmes invest two pavilions of Seine-Saint-Denis, that of Drancy and a second in Sevran. A dozen watches and fifty jewels were discovered in various caches fitted out by the investigators who occasionally discovered the existence of a particularly elaborate video surveillance system to detect any intrusion.
Contacted by the JDD, the Paris prosecutor’s office indicates that six of the seven people arrested in France were placed in pre-trial detention in mid-May. Indicted for concealment in an organized gang and criminal association, three French residents arrested in Antwerp were also imprisoned on their return from Belgium on May 26. Two Belgian jewelers are awaiting extradition.
According to a source close to the investigation, the gold jewelry was resold by weight, before being melted down, and the watches according to their value. In a similar investigation in 2022, the gendarmes of Versailles had established that another clan of Serbian receivers had managed to resell to Belgian accomplices some 45 kg of gold for a profit of around 2.3 million euros. The value of the loot seized last month in Seine-Saint-Denis and Antwerp – a Richard Mille watch at 300,000 euros would appear, according to our information, among the objects found – is being assessed.
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