With a booty amounting to several million euros stolen in the center of Paris, the robbery of the Milleis bank branch will remain as one of the “most beautiful” blows of the last twenty years.
Five men, including the director of the bank, aged 38 to 56, were indicted on June 11 in Paris.
They are suspected of having, on January 22, 2019 in Paris (8th arrondissement), robbed this establishment located on the Champs-Élysées roundabout.
Two of them were imprisoned and the other three were released under judicial supervision.
At 9:14 am on the day of the robbery, four armed criminals armed with an automatic pistol surprise the director who has just gone out to smoke a cigarette.
Pushed inside, he is tied up with an employee.
The robbers have a fake explosive device near the victims and put up a sign on the door indicating that the bank is closed for "technical problems".
The alarm system is disabled and the CCTV cameras are blinded with expanding foam.
Sixty-eight chests open to the grinder
The criminals attack the chests using a disc cutter. In three hours, they will open sixty-eight. Around noon, they clean the walls and the floor with bleach and scatter hair in an attempt to fool the police. The goal is to leave the genetic signatures of strangers at the crime scene. Half an hour later, the thieves left the premises with a clear air and the establishment's employees sounded the alert.
The prejudice remains unclear. Only twenty owners lodge a complaint detailing the amount of what was stolen from them. Investigators from the banditry repression squad estimate the declared amount of the loot at nearly twenty million euros in cash, gold and jewelry. "With bank safes, you never know what they contain," explains an investigator. And the police only have the owners' statements to assess the amount of what has been stolen. "
From the outset, investigators from the Paris judicial police suspected the director. "The fact that he went out to smoke at the precise moment of the arrival of the robbers did not cease to amaze the police", specifies a source close to the case. According to our information, he would have sold this coup to this team of criminals in order to invest in real estate in Africa. Despite the thieves' efforts to drown the tracks, forensic technicians discovered the genetic imprint of a "handsome thug" on hair deposited in an attempt to fool them.
On June 7, the DRPJ Paris banditry repression brigade launched a net and arrested the suspects in Fontenay-sous-Bois (Val-de-Marne), Colombes (Hauts-de-Seine), Boulogne-Billancourt , in Paris (19th century) and in Bobigny (Seine-Saint-Denis).
Searches are also carried out on the property of one of the suspects in Malaga (Spain).
"The investigation has above all made it possible to establish that after the facts, they spent a lot of money ... too much", adds our source.
A "termite", a robber and a kidnapper
During the hearings, the director confessed explaining how he informed the criminals. His alleged accomplices, long anchored in delinquency, did not wish to explain themselves. Abdelbasset, 56, is what is called a "termite" in police jargon. This inhabitant of Colombes is breaking down the walls to rob the best addresses in the capital. Hédiard, the luxury grocer of La Madeleine and the cellar of chef Joël Robuchon where he had acquired 95 grands crus, are among the many places he “visited” during his long career. His name comes up about sixty times in the police files. Hamza de Bobigny, 38, is known to have participated in the kidnapping of a computer consultant committed in Saint-Mandé (Val-de-Marne) in June 2007 against a ransom of 50,000 euros.
The name of the third, Mohamed, from Fontenay-sous-Bois, is mentioned in the book by Brendan Kemmet and Stéphane Sellami, “Maghreb Connection”. Known to be part of a ring cutter team. Nearly twenty years ago, he was close to the Montreuil robbers gang. He would have tried in particular to attack in 2001, an armored van in Sainte-Maxime (Var). Arrested six months later, investigators have never been able to prove that he had participated in this attack. The fourth, Riad, is known for cases of drug trafficking, criminal conspiracy and concealment.
