French police were on Tuesday investigating how jewelry said to be worth 4.5 million euros (US$6.2 million) was stolen from the daughter of the mayor of Kiev during a one-day visit to Paris.
French judicial officials said they had confirmed that the victim of the handbag snatch was indeed Kristina Chernovetska, 30-year-old daughter of Leonid Chernovetsky, the colorful mayor of the Ukrainian capital.
Earlier, one of the mayor’s aides had denied the report, which could be embarrassing to Kiev city hall, given the huge value of the jewels that the victim is said to have been carrying.
The chief Ukrainian consular official in Paris, Kostiantyn Kostenko, said: “This is a matter for the French police, it concerns a private citizen.”
French investigators, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Chernovetska arrived at Charles de Gaulle airport at 10am on Monday for a lay-over of several hours while en route to New York.
She rented a Mercedes and driver and set off to spend some time in Paris, but was caught in heavy traffic on the A1 motorway where it passes through the suburb of Saint-Denis just outside the city proper.
A thief smashed the window of the car and snatched Chernovetska’s handbag, dropping around US$10,000 in cash as he made his getaway, pursued in vain by the victim’s driver, the French officials said.
Officials said Chernovetska’s statement declared that the bag contained jewels worth 4.5 million euros, around 26,000 times the average monthly wage of her father’s constituents.
French officials said the spot where the theft took place is notorious for such attacks and that the Ukrainian mayor’s daughter did not appear to have been specifically targeted.
Earlier, Mayor Chernovetsky’s adviser Marta Grimska told the Interfax news agency: “This has nothing to do with Kristina. I think it is a joke and that she has been mixed up with someone, probably someone with a similar name.”
Grimska said the mayor’s daughter was in Kiev when the robbery took place.
“When I told her about these reports by telephone, she laughed a lot,” Grimska also told the online newspaper Ukrainska Pravda.
A hugely controversial figure with many enemies, Chernovetsky senior won the post of mayor in 2006 following a career as a businessman and banker.
Nicknamed “Kosmos” for his increasingly unworldy behavior, last year he gave a news conference dressed only in swimming trunks and ran a lap around Kiev’s Dynamo Stadium in order to show that he was in good health.
In March last year a parliamentary commission probing his reign as mayor advised him to undergo psychiatric tests after antics that included recording a disc of 1980s hits and proposing to auction off his kisses.
Voters may be less amused by his family’s apparent wealth, however, with Ukraine having suffered badly in the global crisis — its economy contracted by about 15 percent last year, the economy ministry said on Tuesday.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS