Holiday Heist

The jet set loses $16 million 'T is the season when the beautiful people cluster at one of their favorite In places, the Spanish Mediterranean resort of Marbella, just west down the coast from Malaga. Clustering there too this Christmas, alas for them, were the creme de la creme of criminals. When Francisco Yelamo, director of the Marbella branch of the Banco de Andalucia, unlocked his bank on the town's main street, the Avenida de Ricardo Soriano, at the end of the Christmas holiday early last week, he opened the doors on a burglary so thorough that it rocked all of Spain. Over a long and lucrative holiday recess, the thieves, still unidentified at week's end, had swiped at least $16 million in money, jewels and other valuables.

The burglars were ready to go to work, it appeared, as soon as Yelamo routinely locked up the bank on Christmas Eve. Once he was gone, they set to their appointed task, knowing that almost 72 hours would elapse before they would be disturbed. Their base of operations was an empty apartment above the bank. From that vantage point, they disconnected four separate alarm systems. Then, just as in the 1956 movie Rififi, they drilled a hole in the floor to the bank's data-processing center. Dropping through, they approached their principal objective: the two doors leading to the bank's 186 safe deposit boxes in the basement of the building. The first iron-barred door was easy to breach; the second, a bulky steel safe door with multiple locks, had to be burned through. Police discovered tangerine peels on the floor by the gates, left there by the burglars, who snacked as they spent hours scorching their way into the vault with acetylene torches.

Once the thieves were inside, the valuables in the private strongboxes were theirs for the taking. The thieves ignored personal papers and discarded jewelry that they apparently considered to be inferior. Included in the haul was a collection of Goya prints owned by Jaime de Mora y Aragon, brother of Queen Fabiola of Belgium. De Mora's first estimate of his losses: $640,000. "I am ruined," said Felici Cultrera, an Italian who lost $250,000 in jewels and who was quick to offer a $100,000 reward.

Little of the loot was insured, and much of it appeared difficult to trace. At week's end police were still trying to learn how much had been taken. Some of the wealthy victims were not in Marbella last week; others preferred to wait to talk to the police until after the mob of Spanish journalists who had swarmed to the resort had disappeared. In addition, some of the money that had been taken might have been what the Spanish refer to as "black money," undeclared income that its owners would just as soon not mention to the authorities.

So extensive was the take that Spanish police assumed that the operation had been carried out by a sizable and experienced gang. The burglars were so familiar with the bank, investigators theorized, that they must have rented a box at some point in order to case the place. One immediate suspect: Frenchman Albert Spaggiari, 50, who with seven accomplices in 1976 hit a Societe Generate branch in Nice for $ 10 million in cash and other valuables. Spaggiari was nabbed by police for that heist, but escaped one year later by jumping out the window of a magistrate's office where he was being questioned. A fugitive ever since, he was reportedly spotted recently near Marbella. This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.