A Brazilian football legend had a suitcase worth half a million euros stolen in Paris during his visit to France for the Olympic Games.
Arthur Antunes Coimbra, also known as “Zico”, had a briefcase containing a Rolex watch, diamond necklace, and several thousand dollars in cash stolen in the French capital by a pair of thieves who targeted his taxi, according to Le Parisien.
The thieves approached Zico’s taxi, the newspaper said, with one addressing him and the taxi driver while the other stole the briefcase, which was on the back seat of the vehicle. Le Parisien estimates that the contents of the case were valued at around 500,000 euros.
The incident is being handled by a special unit of the French Ministry of the Interior called the Brigade for the Repression of Banditry. The Ministry is also responsible for security around Paris for the duration of the Olympics.
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Newsweek contacted the French Ministry of the Interior for more information about the case.
Zico was attending the Olympics as part of Brazil’s delegation, as he has previously done at the delayed 2020 Japanese games, where he carried the Olympic flame. Soccer remains the most popular sport in Brazil by far, and Zico is regarded as one of the greatest players ever.
Zico is one of 10,500 athletes who are expected to attend the opening ceremony today. The delegations will be ferried across the River Seine in almost 100 boats. An estimated 11 million visitors are expected to attend the games in person.
Heightened tensions on the international stage have meant that security in Paris is at an all-time high for the Olympics. Thirty-thousand armed police officers have been deployed every day, with another 25,000 private security guards and 18,000 French soldiers being used as support. Large sections of Paris have been closed off for the event, and AI-powered facial recognition CCTV has also been put into use across the city.
In particular, the war in Gaza has led to members of the Israeli delegation being harassed, with their soccer team being booed heavily during a match with Mali. Israel Katz, Israel’s foreign minister, told French ambassadors that they had intelligence indicating that Iranian operatives were targeting Israeli tourists.
Additionally, the Paris prosecutor’s office confirmed to Newsweek that French authorities detained a Russian man on charges of “his intention to organize events likely to cause destabilization during the Olympic Games.”
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