Multi-million diamond heist ‘was inside job’
Police hunt mole as they reveal gang pierced 7ft of concrete with 77lb drill
‘It’s sophisticated, it’s organised’
THE multi-million-pound Hatton Garden gems heist gang had an insider who helped them, detectives believe.
An alarm was triggered when the professional gang broke into the building in the heart of London’s jewellery district, they said yesterday.
A security guard is understood to have made a cursory check of the property on Good Friday before leaving when he found nothing untoward.
But police refused to say whether officers were despatched to investigate reports of a possible break-in at Hatton Garden Safe Deposit Ltd.
This meant the gang was able to work uninterrupted during the entire Easter weekend and escape with diamonds and cash worth ‘millions and millions’.
Fresh details of the daring heist emerged yesterday as police forensic teams continued to sift through the rubble in the vault. The gang used a heavy-duty drill weighing 77lb to bore through a reinforced 7ft concrete wall to reach the vault.
When police were called to the crime scene they discovered cheaper jewels left strewn amid a large heap of rubble in the vault.
Detective Chief Inspector Paul Johnson of the Flying Squad said: ‘I’d say it’s a sophisticated offence and clearly it would have taken some preplanning. It’s organised. It’s people who have planned it and they know how they were going to go about it.
‘I would imagine that the pool of people [who could carry out the heist] is quite limited.’
It has also emerged that celebrities and Premier League footballers could be among the victims of the thieves.
A source told the Daily Mail: ‘At least two of the jewellers have gems in the vault which have been bought by footballers and celebrities. They are waiting nervously to find out if they are among the victims.’
Mr Johnson described how the gang gained access to one of the offices on the second floor of the building where they disabled the lift before climbing down. Once in the basement the thieves forced open the lift doors to get close to the vault.
They used a £3,500 Hilti DD350 drill, which is commonly used on large construction sites, to drill through the reinforced concrete wall to reach the vault.
Joel Vinsant, secretary of the Drilling and Sawing Association, said that even with high-tech equipment, it may have taken hours for the thieves to drill through the concrete.
He said: ‘What they might have done is to bore several holes with a rig-based drill until they had made a space big enough to get through, rather than boring one hole and breaking through. It could have taken up to an hour per hole.’
During the raid the gang used an angle grinder and crowbars to force their way into 70 deposit boxes to steal the gems and cash inside. They then made their escape before employees arriving for work on Tuesday spotted the raid.
Mr Johnson added: ‘The scene is chaotic. The vault is covered in dust and debris and the floor is strewn with discarded safety deposit boxes and numerous power tools, including an angle grinder, concrete drills and crowbars.
‘There is no sign of forced entry to the outside of the building. We are in the process of identifying the owners of the safety deposit boxes and contacting them to take statements and find out what has been stolen.’
He said his team had only just reached the vault because of the amount of debris at the scene. Mr Johnson added: ‘It’s got to be a slow, painstaking and methodical forensic process to get in there.’ Ex-Flying Squad commander John O’Connor told Sky News: ‘You’ve got a major strong room, there’s no sign of a forced entry, they’ve apparently been able to abseil down the lift shaft to get access to the vault – I just find it astonishing that it was that easy.
‘The fact that there is no sign of forced entry, what does that mean? That someone left the door open? That someone left the windows open? It smacks all the time of inside aid.’ The huge haul was ‘stolen to order’ for the Middle Eastern market, according to sources. Experts fear the thieves may have already smuggled the jewels out of the country and are planning to cut up the larger gems to make it easier to sell them on the black market.
One jeweller who rents a deposit box said police have identified the owners of 30 boxes which had been broken into.