Burglars tunnelled into a Parisian bank vault and raided around 100 safety deposit boxes rented by private customers before making good their escape, investigators said yesterday.
Police said identifying and putting a value on what was missing would be a long and difficult task, and that the gang appeared to have been equipped with sophisticated tools for what was otherwise a very traditional robbery.
The bust into the LCL branch on Avenue de l'Opera, between the Louvre and the Opera Garnier in the heart of tourist Paris, late on Saturday night by passing through ventilation pipes and tunnelling in from a neighbouring cellar.
The branch itself was closed for renovations, but a security guard who heard noises from the basement was confronted by three individuals, who overpowered him, lashed him to a chair and ordered him not to move.
Meanwhile, the gang used drills to cut a hole in the thick wall of the vault just large enough for some of them to squeeze through and ransack around half the branch's 200 safety deposit boxes.
Just after 7 a.m. on Sunday, the guard, who could no longer hear drilling and could smell acrid smoke, raised the alarm. The gang had abandoned their tools and set fire to the premises to disguise any clues to their identity.
Witnesses said they saw four or five men leaving the area in a van, investigators said.
The fire had set off the bank's automatic sprinkler system and police were unable to begin investigations in the flooded basement until Monday morning.
LCL confirmed there had been a robbery, but said the clients' boxes were operated confidentially and that it therefore had no idea how much money and what kind of valuables might have gone missing.
The bank said the guard is in good health but undergoing medical and psychological screening after his night-long ordeal.
The weekend raid bore strong similarities to a strike in September against another bank undergoing building work, this time in Seine Saint-Denis in the Paris suburbs, in which 117 safe deposit boxes were emptied.