The hunt was on Monday for the band of thieves who stole eight priceless royal pieces of jewellery from the Louvre Museum in the heart of Paris in broad daylight.
Officials said a team of 60 investigators was working on the theory that the raid was planned and executed by an organised crime group.
The heist reignited a row over a lack of security in France’s museums, with Justice Minister Gerald Darmanin admitting Monday to security flaws in protecting the Louvre.
“What is certain is that we have failed, since people were able to park a furniture hoist in the middle of Paris, get people up it in several minutes to grab priceless jewels, and give France a terrible image,” he told France Inter radio.
After several other robberies from French museums in recent months, Interior Minister Laurent Nunez had acknowledged Sunday that securing them was a “major weak spot”.
The thieves arrived between 9:30 and 9:40 am (0730 and 0740 GMT) Sunday, shortly after the museum opened to the public at 9:00 am, a source close to the investigation said.
They used a truck with an extendable ladder like those used by movers to get access to the Apollo Gallery, home to the royal collection, and cutting equipment to get in through a window and open the display cases.
A brief clip of the raid, apparently filmed on the phone of a visitor to the museum, was broadcast on French news channels.
The masked thieves stole nine 19th-century items of jewellery, one of which — the crown of the Empress Eugenie — they dropped and damaged as they made their escape.
It is covered in 1,354 diamonds and 56 emeralds, according to the museum’s website.
– Seven-minute raid –
Eight “priceless” items of jewellery were stolen, the culture ministry said Sunday.
The list they released included an emerald-and-diamond necklace that Napoleon gave his wife Empress Marie-Louise.
Also stolen was a diadem that once belonged to the Empress Eugenie, which is dotted with nearly 2,000 diamonds, and a necklace that once belonged to Marie-Amelie, the last queen of France. It has eight sapphires and 631 diamonds, according to the Louvre’s website.
The whole raid took just seven minutes and is thought to have been carried out by an experienced team, possibly “foreigners”, Nunez said.
The intervention of the museum’s staff forced the thieves to flee, leaving behind some of the equipment used in the raid, the culture ministry said.
The loot would be impossible to sell on in its current state, said Alexandre Giquello, president of the leading auctioneer house Drouot.
– National ‘humiliation’ –
It was the first theft from the Louvre since 1998, when a painting by Camille Corot was stolen and never seen again.
Sunday’s raid relaunched a debate over what critics says is poor security at the nation’s museums, far less secure than banks and increasingly targeted by thieves.
Last month, criminals broke into Paris’s Natural History Museum, making off with gold samples worth $700,000.
The same month, thieves stole two dishes and a vase from a museum in the central city of Limoges, the losses estimated at $7.6 million.
Sunday’s robbery sparked angry political reactions.
“How far will the disintegration of the state go?” said far-right National Rally party leader Jordan Bardella on social media, calling the theft “an unbearable humiliation for our country”.
President Emmanuel Macron said on social media that “everything” was being done to catch the perpetrators and recover the stolen treasures.
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© Agence France-Presse
