How thieves disguised as workers stole treasure worth 166 million KM from a vault in central London

British police have released CCTV footage from the Hatton Garden vault in the heart of London, from which a large quantity of jewels disappeared on Easter. According to initial estimates, the value of the stolen treasure is around 60 million pounds, which is approximately 166 million KM, writes Jutarnji list, reports Patria.

This is one of the boldest and largest robberies in recent British history, and the footage shows how the bandits, disguised as ordinary workers (but with masked faces), transported the precious stones to a white van in trash cans.

As the Sunday Express writes, a witness claims that on Thursday, April 2, just a few hours before the first phase of the robbery, he saw suspicious individuals from Eastern Europe in the building where the vault is located - two arrived by motorcycle, and a third by van.

The first phase of the robbery began at 9:23 PM on the aforementioned Thursday. At that moment, four minutes after the workers locked the building, which was supposed to remain closed during the Easter holidays, one man was seen descending towards the vault. Shortly thereafter, three more individuals are seen carrying trash cans from a white van and then pushing them into the building.

The next morning around 8 AM, the trio was seen talking to each other, then loading things into the van and leaving for an unknown destination.

On Saturday at 9:17 PM, a red-haired man entered the building and went down to the vault. An hour later, two more men arrived. On Easter at 6:10 AM, the bandits spent 20 minutes removing bags from the vault full of jewels, stuffing them into trash cans, which they then drove to the van and fled.

On Tuesday, the first working day, one of the employees noticed that someone had broken in. He immediately called the police, who swarmed the scene in large numbers. Soon, the owners of the deposited treasures began to arrive, angrily demanding information about their jewels.

It was only on Wednesday that the police realized the scale of the robbery - the entire contents of about 70 containers were taken from the vault.

The gang is led by criminals from Serbia and Montenegro, and they are reportedly also connected to the rest of the Balkan underworld.

- I am sure that investigators will try to determine if this robbery is connected to the Pink Panther - former Scotland Yard detective Jim Dickie told the Sunday Express.

He is convinced that the bandits must have had an inside man in the vault because they knew well where and what they were looking for.

So far, the police have contacted dozens of owners of the stolen goods, but the hope of ever seeing their jewels again is not great; some say the treasure has likely already ended up on another continent, and perhaps has even been resold.