It is a generally held belief that daring robberies along with kidnap for ransom activities peak near Christmas season and some believe that more crimes of the sort will be perpetrated as the 2010 election draws near.

Yesterday a Rolex Store inside the posh new wing of the sprawling Greenbelt shopping complex in Makati became the target of a daring robbery. Barely two years old, Greenbelt 5 hosts a number of international fashion luxury brands, such as Balenciaga, Michael Kors, Kenneth Cole, Zara and Escada Sport.

Newspaper accounts say that men wearing bonnets and the uniforms of bomb squad agents got off a van at the Greenbelt 5 basement parking area, rushed passed security guards telling them that they were responding to a call about a bomb in the building.  A shoot-out ensued and one of the six robbers fell dead.  The robber lay face down in the Rolex store entrance, its glass windows shattered. A grenade launcher and a .45 cal. pistol lay near him.

The five other robbers escaped in a Toyota Corolla and a Honda City. The other robbers were armed with Armalite rifles, police said.

Police have no official estimate as to how much the robbers carted away, but with watches costing between P300,000 to P1,000,000 each, the loot could be worth a very large sum of money.

Carlos Celdran, one of the more well-known Filipino online citizens, shared this twitpic on Facebook.  It shows the aftermath of the robbery.

 

Compared with the other violent episodes that gripped Makati City in fear, this robbery may be daring but still incomparable to the Oakwood Mutiny, the Glorietta Blast, and the Manila Peninsula Siege — all three happened within a few hundred meters of the Rolex robbery yesterday.

Nevertheless, the robbery of the Rolex Store in Greenbelt 5 shows that it was not only a well planned heist — it was also well-funded.  Robberies of this nature often breed speculation that certain rogue cliques within the military and the police could be behind this.

In anycase, perhaps Ayala Land Incorporated and the Makati City government should be on its toes for the next few weeks, unless another robbery of this sort happens in the country’s premiere business and shopping district.