Robbing the Belgian Royal Family. Proceeds? Somewhere between 400 and 800 MILLION francs

Of the many expropriation operations mounted by the libertarian groups in France, one stands out above all the rest. The robbing of the Belgian royal family.

To round off my series of articles about the libertarian underground in France, I have decided to zero in on just one of the expropriations they mounted and I have settled on the most spectacular one – or so it seems to me at any rate – mounted by Spanish libertarians on French soil. The amount that was netted, the fact that some members of the gang were never discovered and that it involved the participation of a number of die-hards (veterans of the civil war, the resistance in France and the guerrilla war against Franco) and that the victim was the Belgian royal family, or the fact that most of the swag was never recovered, have inclined me in that direction. Besides, this was a story which – in its beginnings at any rate – Hollywood could have picked for one of its trashy movies.

Some time ago I wrote an article about the “Resistance Hold-up”, another ambitious expropriation operation mounted against the Nazis and their collaborators (anyone wanting to run an eye over it can find it at https://www.elsaltodiario.com/ni-cautivos-ni-desarmados/el-mayor-asalto-de-la-historia-el-atraco-de-la-resistencia#comentarios ). [translated version: The Greatest Train Robbery in History: “the Resistance Hold-Up” https://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/0rxxpg]

The one we are going to examine today was carried out at a time when the vast majority of France had been freed from German rule. Whereas the one just cited was carried out by a French unit albeit with Spanish members of the maquis among them, some of them anarchists, some not – this time it was a Spanish libertarian gang that struck. That first hold-up came in the spring of 1944, on 18 December to be precise. Depending on who is telling the story the “Resistance raid” netted 2,280 million francs and the Spanish anarchist raid somewhere between 400 and 800 million francs. Not bad, eh? The spring hold-up went ahead on the strength of information leaked by the prefect of the Dordogne department. In the case that we are going to have a look at today, the tip-off came from Pedro Pérez, an economic migrant who was working as butler in the target location. And where did the robbery take place? Well, in a gambling den – no, not so much a gambling den as a mansion known as the Villa Nathalia on the Avenue de Tarbes in a residential area of the town of Pau. Easy pickings.

I need not, I hope, remind readers that the bulk of the proceeds from these expropriation operations went to cover the costs of the huge numbers of prisoners at that time, as well as support for their dependents and to shore up the loss-making libertarian press and the upkeep of the underground apparatus and its groups fighting Francoism. The official organizations were more law-abiding.

Let me open with the Hollywood trash scenario. What I have here is a blue-blooded princess, whose name I refuse to recall; of Belgian extraction, she was caught up, along with an Austrian archduke, in a illicit affair (much like these articles) and she ended up pregnant. By around about 1870 she had packed her bags and moved to Pau with her as yet unborn child. When she was ready to give birth, she went to a nearby clinic which is where her son – Paul de Marthe – was delivered. Shortly after that, the little princess in question decided to return to her home country. But what was she to do with her illegitimate child? She could not bring him home with her. Who would find him a place? Well, there was a Polish doctor whom she trusted. He received 50,000 francs (quite a sum of money at that time) to hire a nanny and look after him.

The poor (not quite so poor now) doctor looked after the child until he was three years old. At which point he in turn passed him on to a family from the Béarn area. The latter looked after the lad as he grew up. When he turned 35 years of age, by which time he was working in a pharmacy, a high-born lady showed up in the area. Using the name Madame de Wautelet, allegedly the wife of a Belgian businessman, she inquired after the person concerned. Hollywood moguls would be delighted to learn that she was none other than his princess mother, come looking for her son, now that he was a grown-up and she was intent not only upon making him legitimate but also upon making him her heir, since she was in poor health. And what the pharmacist inherited was not at all bad : five hotels and villas in Pau and its surroundings, two properties in Morlaas, two hotels in Brussels, a collection of marbles, paintings by famous artists – three Rembrandts among them – Belgian bank stocks and, above all, the finest collection of jewels in Europe.  And where did this brand-new millionaire settle himself? Well in the Villa Nathalia we mentioned earlier. Having no wish to turn this into a three and bit hours scenario, let me summarize. Not that the story ends there. The wealthy heir hired Paul Sarthou as his secretary as a result of certain incidents having to do with a road accident involving his brand-new sedan. And, as is always the way in such tales, he bequeathed most of his inheritance to his secretary, with whom he had become fast friends. And now we come to the end of our story. In 1927 Paul Sarthou hired as his butler a Spanish economic migrant by the name of Pedro Pérez aka Pierrot. And so the story continued up until December 1944, even though another world war and the occupation of France had taken place.

Which brings us to 18 December 1944 when Paul Sarthou took it into his head to go for a stroll because, as it happened, his four cars happened to be out of action. He had not gone far before he was intercepted by a man. On his return home he found his staff being held at gunpoint by three strangers armed with handguns and sub-machineguns. While he was out for his stroll, five men – one of them in a captain’s uniform – had rung the bell back at the villa. Trusting to the uniform, the staff had opened the door. At which point the guns were produced. Once the master returned, the questioning started, as did the search for loot and that took two hours. Some ready cash was found, but the raiders had been well briefed. 

”The jewels. Where are they?”

At first there was silence, arguments and threats and then …

“Behind the chimney breast”

The chimney breast actually turned out to be a phoney and in behind it there was an actual strongbox. A full one, a very full one. And the contents? Necklaces and chains of diamonds and pearls; there was even an extremely valuable coral one, not to mention emeralds, rubies, sapphires, gold and 600 Bank of Belgium share certificates and several hundred thousand francs’ worth of coins. A treasure trove valued at somewhere between 400 and 800 million francs; depends who one asks. A shocking affair. After that Monsieur Sarthou was locked up with his staff in one of his wine-cellars and the gang of raiders scarpered.

Paul Sarthou reported the robbery but asked for it to be kept hush-hush. In fact, there were no reports in the newspapers. And it looked like the matter had been forgotten about. Of the raiders, the jewels and the cash, there was no news, even though a watch had been kept on jewellers and fences just in case one of the stolen items might resurface. And it continued like that up until 1949. After five years of questioning, fruitless searches and cooperation between the police from Toulouse, Marseilles, Paris, Bordeaux and Lyon and the Spanish police and even Interpol, finally something did turn up. Well, rather more than just something: up popped the informant, none other than Pedro Pérez, the butler at the Villa Nathalia, where he had been upwards of 20 years in service. It was revealed that in November 1944 he had run into a countryman of his. They had chatted a few times at the Café Paul and he had mentioned the name of his employer and a few of the “items” kept in the villa. He had been promised a million francs for his information and cooperation. Later that figure was revised downwards to a few thousand francs.

The man with whom Pedro Pérez had been chatting turned out to be José Bañón, of whom more later. Bañón was a member of the MLE and had very good connections with the Coordination Section, so it was not long before the intelligence reached its ears and within a month the whole operation was ready to go. A team was put together, made up of the following: José Bañón, Amador Prada Blanco (the man in the captain’s uniform), Miguel Maldonado, Antonio Pérez, Manuel Sola and Manuel Santos. 

In late 1949, as we have said, Superintendent Reillac stumbled upon his first lead. And by early 1950 the police had their informant. And after the usual interrogations the other names came to light. Shortly after that, the gendarmes arrested José Bañón and Antonio Pérez in Paris, whilst Miguel Maldonado was picked up in Saint Etienne. It should be said that Bañón had returned only a few months before from a failed maquis expedition into Aragon which had entailed several clashes with the Civil Guard; Bañón had been in charge of the expedition. Bañón was a native of Valencia. After going into exile, he had fought the Nazis as part of the maquis in the Ariège department. After the liberation of that department he had joined the Libertad Battalion. Actually, the dates for the jewellery raid overlapped with the dates of his service in that unit. Since 1946 he had been in various libertarian expropriator groups operating in France. Information was also uncovered about the other members of the December 1944 raider group. Manuel Sola and Manuel Santos had crossed the Pyrenees and were in hiding in Spain. They had all served in the Resistance in France. As for “the captain”, Amador Prada, he too had crossed over the border in 1946, operating with a group in Franco’s capital. After extorting money from a businessman, he was attacked by the police, threw a bomb that wounded three policemen and, after a scuffle, had been arrested, tried and executed by the Francoists. 

As for the proceeds of the raid, I read somewhere that some of the gems were recovered – three of them, to be exact – but that nothing more was ever seen of most of them. Then again, it should be said that the MLE’s ranks included a few specialist jewellers. The best known of these was Martí Borrás aka el Marras from Barcelona; he was always ready to place his skills in the organization’s service. Did the gems from the Villa Nathalia pass through his hands? We cannot be sure but it seems more than likely. He was one of Laureano Cerrada’s men. According to the newspapers, the jewellery had been taken apart and broken up by a Spanish jeweller in Toulouse. In actual fact, the police arrested eight Spanish jewellers operating in the area and charged them with concealment and malpractice, but they were never able to prove anything and all were released on licence.

Four men accused of the raid stood trial in Pau in 1953.  It should be said that Pedro Pérez was forgiven as far as the hold-up was concerned but sentenced by the court to three years in prison, although he did get his old job at the Villa Nathalia back. The other accused adopted the ploy of blaming everything on Antonio Pradas who had been executed by Franco years earlier and this successfully ensured that they received lesser sentences thanks to the defence put up by the celebrated legal counsel to the anarchists, none other than Henry Torres. For his part, Bañón was sentenced to 15 years’ hard labour, whilst Antonio Pérez and Miguel Maldonado received eight years apiece. Manuel Sola and Manuel Santos were sentenced, in absentia, to 20 years’ hard labour plus a 20-year ban on residing in France. The libertarians were defended by the lawyer Henry Torres, who had been brought in from Paris, and by a local barrister, Boudou.

Well, there you have it, gang. How does it feel knowing that the jewels were not recovered? Besides, I have another trail to chase up now: who were the jewellers? A wrinkled brow and a lot of head-scratching, but, with a bit of luck, we will get to know a part of their stories too.

El Salto, 26 June 2025 https://www.elsaltodiario.com/ni-cautivos-ni-desarmados/expropiacion-corona-belga-400-800-millones-francos 

Image: Four members of the group (left to right, top to bottom): Antonio Pérez, José Bañón, Miguel Maldonado y Amador Prada. Source: Imanol.

Translated by: Paul Sharkey.