Qatari women robbed of £4.3m valuables in Paris motorway hold-up

Two Qatari women were held up on a Paris motorway and robbed of valuables worth more than €5m (£4.3m) in the latest robbery targeting wealthy visitors to the French capital.

The women, in their 60s, had just left Le Bourget airport north-east of the capital on Monday when their chauffeur-driven Bentley was held up by two masked men who sprayed them with teargas, a police source said.

The source said the robbers stole “everything in the vehicle: jewels, clothes, luggage”.

Last month, the US reality TV star Kim Kardashian was tied up and robbed at gunpoint in a luxury apartment in the heart of Paris.

Police said the robbers held a gun to Kardashian’s head, bound and gagged her and shut her into a bathroom in the biggest jewellery robbery of an individual in France in more than 20 years.

In another incident, Mallika Sherawat, a Bollywood actor, was punched in the face and sprayed with teargas by three masked men in an upmarket area of Paris this month.

The incidents have done little to help efforts by the government to coax tourists back to France after the November



2015 jihadi attacks in which 130 people died, followed by the Bastille Day truck attack in Nice that killed 86.

In the Paris area alone, tourism revenue is expected to plunge by €1.5bn this year.

Security has been stepped up around tourist magnets in Paris in response to the high-profile robberies.

The attack on the Qatari women took place on a section of motorway leading north from Paris to the Charles de Gaulle and Le Bourget airports, which is often the scene of hold-ups targeting wealthy foreigners in luxury cars, some of whom carry large amounts of cash.

The robbers often take advantage of traffic jams near the Landy tunnel to pounce.

Last month, a taxi transporting the chief executive of a French furniture chain among other passengers was held up after leaving Le Bourget, which is often used by private jets.

The three robbers made off with an estimated €100,000 in valuables.

A Korean art collector was the target of a similar heist last year, with three attackers snatching €4m in Chanel jewels from her car in the Landy tunnel.