The robbery of high profile personality Kim Kardashian in Paris shocked the celebrity stratosphere, but it also raised concrete questions about protocols, procedures and personal security.
The reality TV star is regularly caught on camera flanked by bodyguards, but late Sunday night she was reportedly tied up in her bathroom after being held at gunpoint at a Paris apartment, while robbers stole more than $10 million worth of jewels.
French media said five men, wearing ski masks and police armbands, entered the building and threatened the concierge. Two of them then went to Kardashian’s apartment.
While the details of robbery are still emerging, one senior security source talking to The Cipher Brief, said there are a series of strategies that can be put in place for personalities like Kardashian or other high net-worth individuals.
“When you have a high profile guest like this, there should be agreements in advance with the security detail of the guest about who has access, how access will be organized, if there will be an escort of any person,” he says. “If it’s inside a hotel building, do you isolate a floor? Do you isolate an area of the building? All those things should be agreed with the security detail of the guest in advance.”
In Kardashian’s case, she was staying at a luxury private residence called Hotel de Pourtales, described as the “best VIP address in town,” which caters to a high profile and celebrity clientele.
That still requires security protocols, says the source. “If it’s a normal hotel, where you have a front desk that might have to be switched out every 3 to 6 months, it’s really hard to make sure that every person would be able to identify who’s a real cop,” he says. “So you have to go through training and make sure that there's at least a simple procedure for them to check…. There needs to be more than just a badge and uniform before you give access.”
It’s unclear if Kardashian’s bodyguard was present at the time of the robbery, but protection from armed assailants is more challenging in France nonetheless, says one French security expert to The Cipher Brief. “The laws on carrying a gun are extremely restricted in France. It’s only official security services. It’s very unlikely that a body guard would have a gun.”
In these types of situations, Paul Wood, CEO of the security group of Pax Mondial, says “most of it is about prevention.”
“There’s a lot of common sense mitigation strategy. You make sure you have a schedule of visitors and people call in advance so you don’t get surprised by unexpected knocks,” he says. “If those happen, you’ve got to have some kind of reach-back to verify if it’s a real call or not.”
He also says establishing a “distress signal” is part of normal procedure. “That’s a key component of any kind of risk mitigation strategy. Who you call [when something happens]. How do you call?” he says.
For public personalities like the Kardashians, where every minute of their day is tracked on social media, raises further questions about securing them. But in this instance, The Cipher Brief experts say the heist seemed to be carefully planned with an adequate amount of surveillance that goes well beyond tracking social media.
As one source says,“You want to really make sure that the person is there when you come to get them.” Social media messages can be unreliable, he explains, because there’s no way to check if they are sent live or pre-programmed.
Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo was quick to condemn the robbery, tweeting Kardashian "will always be welcome in Paris." She later issued a statement saying “it is a very rare act that happened in a private space.”
But France has been the target of other high-profile heists in the past. In May 2015 a group of robbers got away with nearly $20 million worth of jewelry from a Cartier shop in Cannes, just days before the annual film festival.
In 2013, Cannes was once again subject to one of Europe’s biggest heists when $53 million worth of jewels was stolen from the Carlton Intercontinental Hotel. One expert attributed that robbery to members of the jewel thief gang referred to as the "Pink Panther" group, an international network of criminals that Interpol believes carried out about 380 armed robberies from “high-end jewelry stores between 1999 and 2015” with a combined value of those thefts equal to more than $370 million.
The timing of the Kardashian robbery couldn’t be worse for France which has seen tourism numbers drop by more than six percent in the aftermath of the Paris and Nice in the past year.
No one has yet claimed responsibility for the robbery, but a manhunt is underway.
Leone Lakhani is an executive producer and reporter at The Cipher Brief.
