Thieves make off with luxury bags worth over HK$1mil

HONG KONG: A store in the Man Yee Building shopping centre in Central was fenced off as investigators gathered evidence following the theft of 15 luxury bags worth HK$1.44mil (RM753,000).

“The display window was broken and the shop had been ransacked. A one-metre sledgehammer was found inside the store,” a police spokesman said yesterday.

“Three masked men used a hammer to break the display window of the store at about 6.30am before entering,” he said, adding that the raid took less than a minute.

Another police source said the three perpetrators arrived in a white seven-seater driven by a fourth man. The masked trio jumped out and ran into the shopping centre after the car pulled over on Pottinger Street near the junction with Queen’s Road Central.

“We believe they had scouted the area before the raid,” he said.

So far, no one has been arrested over the theft, which involved Hermes and YSL handbags.

The raid came to light when a security guard discovered the damaged window early the next morning and called police.

Detectives from Central police district are handling the case.

The shop, which opened on Oct 24, is a pop-up store for online luxury bazaar Guiltless. According to its website, the store is expected to be open until Dec 26.

Guiltless was founded by Yen Kuok, the youngest child of Malaysian billionaire Robert Kuok. Like many of the items the company carries, the stolen handbags were secondhand items.

Separately, a luxury apartment on Tai Tam Road, Stanley was burgled on Sunday night, with a HK$40,000 (RM21,000) watch and HK$10,000 (RM5,200) in foreign currency stolen from a safe.

Both burglaries happened just two weeks before the start of the annual police campaign against such crimes during the coming festive season.

Between Dec 17 and Feb 25, officers will step up patrols and set up observation posts in high-risk locations, as well as conduct an anti-crime publicity campaign. — South China Morning Post