Graff store manager ‘was inside man for £40m diamond raid’

"King of bling": store owner Laurence Graff with his wife Anne Marie
12 April 2012

The manager held at gunpoint in the Graff £40 million diamond raid helped plan the robbery at his store, a court heard today.

Martin Leggatt was accused of helping to set up the crime as "an inside job for the insurance payout".

The raid on the New Bond Street shop last August was one of a succession of robberies at Graff's stores in London in the last 30 years, the jury was told.

Many of them were identical, using two robbers in disguise being let into the shop and producing guns, said Courtney Griffiths, QC, defending at Woolwich crown court. "I don't want there to be any illusion between us — I'm going to suggest that the robbery in August last year was an inside job and you were involved in it?" Mr Leggatt replied: "I would be absolutely and genuinely and completely fascinated to hear your evidence on that."

Mr Griffiths said: "There just appears to be recurring bad luck for Mr [Laurence] Graff — he just appears to be getting robbed all the time of millions of pounds of jewellery."

The court heard that the owner of Graff jewellers lost £10 million in four days in a failed share deal four months before the robbery. Mr Graff bought half a million shares in a company called Gem Diamonds for £28.5 million but four days later the share price had plunged by 35 per cent.

In April last year, four months before the diamond robbery, Gem Diamonds posted losses of £576 million.

One month after the robbery Mr Graff's wife Anne Marie sold her shares in Graff, followed a month later by her husband, the court heard. The share dealings came after Mr Graff had been left "sitting on a load of unsold diamonds which he could not shift" said Mr Griffiths.

There had been a massive upsurge in diamond business in 2008. This was followed by the credit crunch.

Details of the movement of shares came after Mr Leggatt, who is not among the nine defendants who have all pleaded not guilty to conspiracy to rob, had challenged the QC to "tell us all in this room what the conspiracy theory is".

Earlier the court had heard that Graff security guards, who could see CCTV of the raid taking place, took three minutes to raise the alarm.

Mr Griffiths called Mr Graff "the king of bling" and a ruthless man with a large ego. Mr Leggatt insisted his boss was "utterly charming, totally modest and impeccably behaved. Mr Leggatt could not say whether Graff's had received an insurance payout for the robbery.

The trial continues.

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