Tamara offers £6m reward to get gems back
Heiress ‘was inspired by Mel Gibson movie’
TAMARA ecclestone has offered a reward of up to £6million for the return of £26million in jewellery stolen in a raid on her mansion.
The heiress says she was inspired by Hollywood film Ransom to try to crack the case herself – as the alleged mastermind of the heist remains at large.
Three Italian men have been jailed for their part in Britain’s biggest domestic burglary, but Croatian Daniel Vukovic is still on the run. miss ecclestone’s west London home was one of three belonging to celebrities targeted in December 2019 by an international gang.
Yesterday, the socialite offered the extraordinary reward in an Instagram post, saying she would pay 25 per cent of the value of any of the more than 400 items which were stolen should they be recovered.
Describing the haul as a ‘lifetime’s worth of jewellery and family heirlooms’, she said she had waited ‘long enough’ to get her possessions back ‘by conventional means’, with just a single pair of earrings found so far.
Miss ecclestone, 38, wrote: ‘If you are the source, you get the reward. It is that simple. With the total value of the burglary being £26million – that’s a reward of up to £6million for anyone that can help me get back what is rightfully mine.’
She added that the police had done ‘an incredible job, but there is only so much they can do... so now I am going to do what I wanted to do right from the beginning and go mel Gibson-style from the movie Ransom’.
In the 1996 thriller, a millionaire businessman decides to track down his son’s kidnappers by offering a bounty on the gang.
When the burglary at her £ 70million mansion took place, miss ecclestone was away on holiday with her husband, art gallery owner Jay Rutland, and their daughter.
Describing how the raid ‘still traumatises my family and I to this day’, she added: ‘The thought of those disgusting people rummaging through every room in my house, invading my home, touching my belongings and stealing some of the things most precious to me, means I will never be able to lay my head to rest in that house again with the same sense of security I once had.
‘Sadly Fifi [her eight-yearold daughter] also overheard conversations that night and the following day about what had happened.
‘Even now, three years later, she still asks if the burglars are coming back and won’t sleep alone.’
Miss ecclestone said the family were unable to claim on insurance as all of the expensive jewellery and gems were excluded from their policy.
Her offer of a reward follows a BBC documentary last week about the robbery – and those on the homes of ex-england footballer Frank Lampard and the late Leicester City owner Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha.
Italians Jugoslav Jovanovic, Alessandro maltese and Alessandro Donati were jailed at Isleworth Crown Court in november after pleading guilty to conspiracy to burgle.
Police believe Vukovic is also part of the gang, and the BBC programme revealed that two attempts to have him extradited to the UK have been rejected by the Serbian authorities, who have ruled that he is a ‘legal resident’ of the country.
He is believed to have flown to Belgrade from Heathrow days after the raids, after a CCTV image was found of him at the airport.
Vukovic – who has used at least 19 aliases including Ljubomir Romanov, Alfredo Lindley and Ljubomir Radosavlejic – has links to countries including Serbia, Italy, Croatia, Bosnia and Peru.
Miss ecclestone, the daughter of ex- Formula one supremo Bernie, has also offered a £250,000 reward to anyone who delivers the suspect to the police in London.
She wrote: ‘This man thinks he can ride off into the sunset with all the spoils from robbing my family and I.
‘Not so fast. not only one of the men that invaded my home... but also the mastermind of the entire burglary and the only one yet to be apprehended.
‘I will happily pay rewards for the return of any of mine or Jay’s stolen possessions and for the capture and prosecution of Daniel Vukovic.’
In a BBC Sounds podcast, Detective Constable Andrew Payne has previously said: ‘It’s clear Daniel Vukovic had a leading role in the conspiracy.
‘It’s a fair assumption that the goods are likely to be in Serbia, which is the host country where Daniel Vukovic is.
‘This is a classic case of it’s buried treasure. It’s out there somewhere. Someone knows where it is. And at some point some of it has to surface.’
A spokesman for the metropolitan Police confirmed yesterday the reward was not being offered by the force.
‘Traumatised to this day’