French police revealed that they are hunting a “commando” of four robbers who pulled off the daring heist of priceless valuables at the Louvre on Sunday — and now they’ve got some key evidence.
No suspects have been identified yet, and it’s still unclear who was involved in the daring caper, which saw the crew break in and free within four to seven minutes.
Culture Minister Rachida Dati told French TV station TF1 that the robbers were “experienced” and had carefully planned the burglary, from break-in to escape.
Interior Minister Laurent Nunez confirmed that the suspects are a “commando of four people.”
Specialist police with the banditry repression brigade along with a unit that tracks antiquities crimes are on the case.
Foreign organized crime has not been ruled out, but authorities are currently treating the gang as domestic criminals, according to French officials.
Whatever their nationality, the thieves will look to get the jewels out of Europe as quickly as possible, experts have warned, given the impossibility of selling them legally on the continent.
“Too well-known, too well-documented, too easily traceable,” jewelry exert Juliane Desol told Le Figaro newspaper.
Speculation is also growing that the gang had help from someone inside the gallery to pull off the shocking raid.
“The perpetrators must be at least a little professional because it takes determination and knowledge of the flaws in the system,” experienced lawyer Thibault de Montbrial told the “Points de Vue” program on Monday.
“I would put a little money on internal complicity,” he added.
On Monday, police recovered a motorcycle helmet belonging to one of the criminals, as well as a glove, in the basket of the truck, investigators told Le Parisien newspaper.
Those items, along with a crown that once belong to the Empress of France which was nabbed and quickly abandoned on the street, mean that investigators have DNA evidence for the perpatrators.
Police have also traced the origin of the construction lift that the robbers brazenly parked outside the Louvre and used to hoist themselves up to the Apollo Gallery, where they broke in and made off with the French equivalent of the crown jewels.
The truck had earlier been stolen after the gang allegedly answered a classified ad.
The assaulted its previous owner, who has not been identified, after answering the post on the French classified ads site Leboncoin and turning up at his house in the small town called — of all things — Louvres, 15 miles northeast of Paris.
The truck, often used for moving furniture in and out of apartments, was abandoned by the four robbers, along with the keys, as the bandits took off on motorized scooters on Sunday morning.
They had tried to set fire to the vehicle following the robbery, but gave up and left on scooters.
The robbery has set up a race against time to find the stolen objects — which include bejeweled necklaces and earrings and a tiara.
The real danger is that the thieves will merely melt them down and dismantle them for their previous metals and gems.
“Their value far exceeds the price of the metal: they carry a story,” she added, explaining that the more likely future for the stolen jewelry is dismantlement and selling for scrap.
“The stones will be unset, the settings melted down, the volumes reduced, the sizes modified,” Desol said, adding that record commodity prices were making such brazen heists worth the risk for criminal gangs.
“With gold at more than 111 Euros [$128] a gram,” these crimes are more likely, she said.
“Since Covid and the current conflicts, the price of gold is very high. If we do not find them quickly, these pieces will leave Europe very quickly,” Desol warned.
India is one of the main hubs for smuggling stolen metals, according to a recent study by the Canadian natural resources group IMPACT, cited by Le Figaro.
The country absorbs, reworks, and re-exports such metals on an enormous scale, facilitating the “legitimization” of such gold and other materials, according to the report.
French politicians have called for the Louvre’s director and security chief to resign following the robbery.
“For the past 24 hours, France has been the laughing stock of the world because of the ridiculous theft of the Crown Jewels from the Louvre, Marion Maréchal from the right-wing Identity-Liberties party wrote on X.
“This humiliation cannot go unchallenged,” she said, adding that France’s Minister for Culture Rachida Dati “must demand the immediate resignation of the museum’s director Laurence Des Cars and the security chief Dominique Buffin, whom she appointed.”
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