Belgrade gangs: Outside the Balkans: The Pink Panthers are an international jewel thief network responsible for a number of robberies and thefts described as some of the most audacious in the history of organized crime.
[3] The organization's membership mostly consists of Serbian and Montenegrin citizens, who are believed to be Bosnian War veterans making use of their military experience for criminal activity.
Before robbing a jewellery store in Biarritz, the gang covered a nearby bench in fresh paint to deter anyone from sitting on it and seeing them in action.
The second, in June 2007, took jewellery valued at ¥284 million; during the heist, Rifat Hadžiahmetović and Radovan Jelušić sprayed tear gas at three saleswomen before taking a tiara, necklaces, and other jewels and fleeing the store.
[1] Prior to one 2008 robbery of Graff jewellers in Dubai, eight gang members drove a pair of Audis through a window, taking watches and other items worth a total of £8 million.
[12] In 2013, the gang was suspected to have struck again when a man wearing a baseball cap and a scarf covering his face broke into the Carlton Hotel in Cannes and made off with $136 million worth of jewels and jewellery being stored by the Leviev diamond house for an exhibit.
[15] Three Pink Panthers from Serbia were declared guilty of robberies carried out in Biarritz, Cannes, Courchevel and Saint-Tropez by one court in Chambéry in 2008.
[1] One suspect in a June 2007 Ginza heist, an ethnic Bosniak Montenegrin national named Rifat Hadžiahmetović, who had been travelling on a forged Bulgarian passport, was arrested in March 2009 by Cypriot police at Larnaca International Airport.
[1] One of the three arrested, Serbian Dragan Mikić, was of special interest to the police investigation into the gang,[20] having been placed on Interpol's "Most Wanted" list,[1] suspected to be a senior member of the Pink Panthers.
[1] A head figure of the Pink Panthers, Mitar Marjanović, was arrested on 8 March 2012 in Rome, after two of his accomplices in a bank robbery, committed a month earlier, dropped stolen items containing Marjanovic's fingerprints.
On 25 July 2013, Milan Poparić, who was serving a sentence of almost seven years for a 2009 robbery at a jewellery store, was the third Pink Panther to escape from a Swiss prison since May 2013.