Five jailed for raid on £50m ‘Louvre of wine’
FIVE men have been jailed for up to five years over a botched operation to break into “the world’s greatest wine cellar”, whose French owner they sequestered and beat in a bid to get the keys to his trove of priceless vintages.
Michel-jack Chasseuil, 75, has described his 40,000-bottle collection as “the Louvre of wine”.
The retired aeronautical engineer has spent much of his life scouring auction rooms in search of rare and prestigious bottles, buying them up and storing them in a highly secure cellar near his home in the village of La Chapelle-bâton, western France.
Experts say the wine trove could be worth anything from €50million to ten times that amount. When Prince Albert II of Monaco came to view the collection in 2012, he called the cellar one of the “Seven Wonders of the World”.
In June 2014, alerted to the priceless bounty, thieves armed with a Kalashnikov assault rifle forced their way into Mr Chasseuil’s home after one masqueraded as a delivery driver.
“No sooner had I gone out to see them, than several armed and hooded men jumped on me and told me to keep quiet, dragging me into the house,” he said at the time.
The five, aged 25 to 38 and from the Lille area of northern France, then subjected him to a terrifying two-hour or- deal in which he was threatened with a screwdriver and a butcher’s knife.
Keeping his cool, the pensioner told them the truth: it was impossible to break in to the cellar because the key to it was lying in a bank safe.
The wine is held in three separate rooms in an underground bunker that he built. Access is via a series of armoured doors, gates and narrow tunnels.
Mr Chasseuil only collects the key once a month to check stock and store new wines. Eventually, the bungling intruders made off with around eight crates of “second-class” wine, leaving Mr Chasseuil with a couple of broken fingers and a strained neck.
During the trial, the accused sought to play down their individual roles, often changed their version of events, and in one case denied even being present during the attack. Only one of them admitted to his precise role, the man who pretended to be the delivery driver.
But the prosecution argued that DNA, telephone and motorway toll trails proved beyond doubt the presence of five men. It pointed out the “contrast” between the way the gang had “meticulously” planned their heist – conducting reconnaissance, stealing a van, changing its number plates – and its more amateurish execution – some of the members were unmasked, and they quickly showed signs of frustration when the plan started backfiring.
On Thursday, all five were sentenced – one in absentia – to prison sentences ranging from 18 months to five years and a sixth was acquitted.
Mr Chasseuil said that he bore “no hatred” towards the thieves, saying: “I forgive but I don’t excuse what they have done.”
Since 2010, he has been working to create a “Louvre of wine” to showcase his finest treasures.
After failing to get backing from France’s ministries of culture and agriculture, he is hoping to complete the ambitious project with funding from wine tasting events.
He hopes a museum will keep his collection in France, but says he has been offered millions to sell by foreign investors from China and Russia.