Heist at airport nets
$350,000 in watches
PHILIPSBURG--Police are investigating the theft of some US $350,000 in Swiss luxury watches from a cargo storeroom at Princess Juliana International Airport (PJIA).
Local attorneys representing a major jewellery retailer on the island said Friday’s heist appeared to be “an inside job.”
The heist, which also appears to include other items shipped to the island, is believed to be the biggest robbery for the year and has had police and airport authorities working around the clock to find out just how the large boxes managed to make their way out of the storage room less than 15 hours after they had arrived in St. Maarten via KLM.
The Daily Herald has learnt that as a result of this major theft, which raises questions about security at the airport, KLM has imposed an embargo on shipment of high-value items to St. Maarten until further notice.
Chief Prosecutor Taco Stein confirmed the heist and said detectives had been interviewing persons throughout the day and had been carrying out their forensic investigation at the crime scene as well.
He said that, because the investigation was still in its very early stage and there was not a full reported list of the missing items, he could not give an exact value.
The jewellery company’s management stated that the cargo had been delivered to Swissport Cargo Services on Friday. It also said it was standard procedure for local cargo companies to allow recipients of high value cargo to collect the cargo on Saturday when it arrived on Friday, as the companies did not wish to have the high value items remain in their warehouses for extended periods.
However, when the jewellery company called to confirm that it would be able to pick up the cargo Saturday, a staff member at the cargo company’s office said, “On Saturday the company is not open to the public.”
By Saturday the watches and several other items of cargo reportedly had disappeared from a safe used by the cargo company to store high-value cargo. The jewellery store management said it was only around 1:00pm Saturday that a representative of the cargo company had arrived on the premises and realised that something was wrong. The store learnt by means of a letter from the cargo company that the warehouse and safe had apparently been broken into.
The jewellery store management team and their attorneys visited the cargo company on Monday. They said that when they had tried to take a look at the location where the cargo had been stored before it was reported stolen, the management of the cargo company had refused to grant them access to it.
The jewellery store owner also found it interesting that two boxes that also contained high value watches hadn’t been stolen, but had been found in the outer section of the cargo company’s warehouse, which is not in keeping with the insurance company’s requirements for storage.
The attorneys learnt through their probing, along with the jewellery store operators, that there had been no security guards on duty and that no security alert had been sounded to indicate a breach of the warehouse. Whether there is a security system in place and, if so, whether it malfunctioned on that day is still unclear.
The cargo company indicated to them that the building was located on PJIA property, suggesting the airport was responsible for overall security. Airport security personnel apparently also visited the company to conduct an investigation.
PJIA President Director Eugene Holiday said he could not comment on the matter, as it was still being investigated by police.
The attorneys also raised the alarm on the lack of proper security at the airport. They said that such a breach in security brought into question the airport’s readiness for possible terrorist threats. They noted that the robbers would have needed at least 45 minutes to open the safe and would have needed more time to load the considerable number of boxes in their getaway vehicle. The lawyers explained that the watches came in sizeable display boxes.
They argued that if the robbers had had all this time to commit their crime, they could just as easily have sneaked onto the airport proper to commit an even more serious offence, like tampering with outgoing cargo or possibly hijacking a plane, if they had wished to do so.
