Jewellery stolen from the Louvre in Paris in a daring daylight robbery has been valued at 88 million euros or $102 million, a French public prosecutor said on Tuesday.
“The Louvre curator estimated the damages to be 88 million euros,” or $102 million, Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau was quoted by AFP as saying on Tuesday.
But she said the greater loss was to France’s historical heritage, adding that the thieves would not pocket the full windfall if they had “the very bad idea of melting down these jewels”.
“This sum is indeed extremely spectacular,” the prosecutor, Laure Beccuau, said in an interview with RTL radio, “but it is in no way comparable to the historical damage caused by this theft.”
Louvre jewellery looted!
Thieves made off with royal jewels during a daylight robbery on Sunday that took less than eight minutes. The loot happened shortly after the world’s most-visited museum opened on Sunday morning.
The theft reignited a row over the lack of security in French museums, after two other institutions were hit last month.
Just last month, criminals broke into Paris’s Natural History Museum, making off with gold nuggets worth more than $1.5 million. Thieves also stole two dishes and a vase from a museum in the central city of Limoges, estimated at $7.6 million.
The 7-min heist
An organised crime group is suspected of being behind the robbery. The thieves are believed to have clambered up a ladder on a truck to break into the museum, then dropped a diamond-studded crown as they fled.
According to The New York Times, burglars, on Sunday morning, rode a mechanical ladder up to the second floor of the Louvre, sawed out a window and climbed inside the wing housing the Apollo Gallery.
There, in a matter of minutes, they snatched eight pieces from a collection of royal jewellery and crown diamonds, including a royal sapphire necklace, a royal emerald necklace and matching earrings, and a diadem worn by Empress Eugénie, the wife of Napoleon III, the NYT reported.
Can the burglars sell the jewels?
Beccuau warned it was unlikely that the burglars would be able to sell the jewels for such a large sum if they tear the pieces apart or melt them.
“So we can perhaps hope that they will think about it and not destroy the jewelry,” she told the radio station.
According to France’s culture ministry, the pieces were not insured, which is not uncommon for state collections because of the prohibitive costs.
It said that “the state acts as its own insurer” when works are in their usual place of conservation, “given the cost of taking out insurance” and the fact that “the accident rate is low.”
Probe on
Beccuau confirmed that four people were involved in Sunday’s robbery and said authorities were analysing fingerprints found at the scene.
Detectives are scouring video camera footage from around the museum as well as from main highways out of Paris for signs of the robbers, who escaped on scooters.
Des Cars, who has run the Louvre since 2021, is set to appear before the Senate’s culture committee from 4:30 pm (1430 GMT) on Wednesday.
Meanwhile, the museum’s director faces security questions from a Senate committee over the brazen weekend heist.
The team investigating the heist has grown to 100 people from 60 at the start, Beccuau said in the interview.
