Tamara Ecclestone unable to claim for £25million of stolen gems due to insurance blunder
F1 heiress Tamara Ecclestone and husband Jay Rutland's mansion in Kensington, west London, was ransacked and the thieves made off with millions worth of priceless gems and watches
Tamara Ecclestone and her husband were unable to recoup any of the £25million lost in their burglary due to an insurance catch, it is reported.
The F1 heiress discovered she and Jay Rutland could not claim a penny back for the stolen goods, which included jewellery and watches, following the crime in late 2019. The insurance policy for their sprawling mansion in Kensington, west London contained an exemption clause for watches and jewellery, which had previously gone unnoticed.
International jewel thieves had ransacked the family's property while they were on holiday in Lapland. It left Tamara, 40, traumatised and so the socialite had to take extra security measures to protect her family.
The thieves spent days scouting the mansions of London's rich and famous before selecting their final targets: the homes of Frank and Christine Lampard, the late Leicester City owner Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha and of course, the Ecclestone mansion on Billionaires' Row. In 2021, three men from Italy pleaded guilty at Isleworth Crown Court to conspiracy to burgle in three raids.
Jay, 43, has said he accepted responsibility for a lack of diligence which meant the family were unable to make a claim for the valuables looted from their home. The art investor said: "Our total insurance claim was for, I think, 40 grand or 45 grand, something like that, which was for the doors in the house because [the burglars] literally smashed down about 25 or 30 doors.
"If you can imagine, every door to every room was locked. So that meant they had to crowbar each door open. So, I remember we claimed on the insurance for those doors to be replaced, but that was it. Nothing else was insured. Don't get me wrong, that's our own fault and clearly it teaches you the importance of checking the small print. But that was one of the exclusions in the policy - watches and jewellery, very specifically."
Jay spoke on Heists Scams and Lies: The Hunt for Tamara Ecclestone's Missing Diamonds, a new investigative podcast. This episode of the Daily Mail's true crime series lifts the lid on the burglary spree, which rocked the UK five years ago.
In it, Jay adds: "For Tamara, it was literally every piece of jewellery that she'd accumulated since she was 16. I think she was lucky in the sense that it wasn't her wedding ring because she had it on her where we were. But there were lots of very sentimental pieces that she'd been given by her mum, by her dad, by other family members, by me."
Almost none of the stolen property, snatched from the three mansions over 13 days, has ever been recovered and is thought to have been smuggled across Europe and beyond. In November 2021, Jugoslav Jovanovic, Alessandro Maltese and Alessandro Donati were jailed for a total of 28 at years at Isleworth Crown Court after pleading guilty to conspiracy to burgle.
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