LONDON — Hatton Garden Safe Deposit Company — The brazen thieves made of with more than $300 Million in jewels.
UPDATE: Detectives have this morning arrested seven men for conspiracy to burgle and recovered a large amount of high value property.
Superintendent Craig Turner, Head of the Flying Squad, provided an update outside New Scotland Yard this afternoon.
At 10:30 this morning, more than 200 officers raided 12 addresses in north London and Kent and arrested the suspects aged between 48 and 76
A number of large bags containing significant amounts of high value property have been recovered from one address. Officers are confident these are items stolen during the burglary.
All seven men have been taken to a London police station. Searches at the addresses are ongoing.
EARLIER REPORT: There was no sign of forced entry to the outside of the building. The thieves had disabled the communal lift on the second floor and then used the lift shaft to climb down into the basement.
They forced open shutter doors into the basement where HGSD is, then made their way to the vault, where they used a heavy duty drill – the make was a Hilti DD350 – to bore holes into the vault wall. The wall is two metres thick and made of re-enforced concrete.
A total of 72 safety deposit boxes were opened, out of 999 boxes in the vault. Of these, seven were vacant, and 11 were due to be drilled out for non-payment of fees.
Anyone who has any information about this theft, or saw anything suspicious in the area around Hatton Garden Safety Deposit Ltd over the Easter bank holiday is asked to contact the Flying Squad, MET POLICE.
