The slow-motion getaway of two thieves from the Louvre clutching €88m (£76m) of France’s crown jewels was captured on video, it has emerged – the latest dramatic twist to the country’s most spectacular heist in decades.
The 36-second clip, which Le Parisien newspaper said it had verified, shows two men dressed in black, one wearing a yellow hi-vis vest and the other a motorcycle helmet, slowly descending on a furniture lift from the museum’s Apollo gallery.
It appears to have been filmed from a nearby window in the museum, looking on to the Quai François Mitterrand where the thieves had earlier parked a stolen truck with a 30-metre (90ft) extendable ladder and basket lift that they used to access the first-floor gallery.
“The individuals are on scooters,” a voice – possibly that of a security guard – is heard to say, apparently into a walkie-talkie. “They are going to leave, they are going to leave.” Seconds later, the men can be seen heading off on two scooters.
“They are leaving,” the male voice then says, while a different voice exclaims: “Damn, there we go – the police.”
Two of the four-man gang broke into the gallery at 9.30am on Sunday, shortly after the museum opened, smashing an apparently unsecured window and then using disc cutters to open two display cases containing the jewellery.
They made off with eight pieces including an emerald and diamond necklace that Napoleon I gave his second wife, Marie Louise, and a diadem that once belonged to the empress Eugénie, wife of Napoleon III.
French media have estimated the operation took less than seven minutes, with the two men who entered the gallery inside for 3 minutes and 58 seconds. France’s interior minister, Laurent Nuñez, has said more than 100 investigators are on the case.
Questioned by senators on Wednesday, the director of the world’s most visited museum, Laurence des Cars, acknowledged a “terrible failure”, admitting there was “highly insufficient” security camera coverage of the outside walls of the vast building.
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