By Mark Nestmann
For many years, I’ve advocated keeping valuable items in private vaults, rather than safety deposit boxes. A raid June 2 on three private vaults in London has led me to change my mind.
In a meticulously orchestrated operation, more than 300 heavily armed police simultaneously raided the vaults, all owned by Safe Deposit Centres Ltd. Subsequently, police arrested two of the South-African born owners of the company on suspicion of money laundering and related charges.
In the most unprecedented example of wholesale confiscation I can recall in a “civilized” country, U.K. police seized every one of the more than 7,000 safety deposit boxes in the vaults. According to a spokesman from the London police, “Each box will be treated as a crime scene in its own right.”