The French Justice Minister has lamented that the security measures "failed" in preventing a massive jewellery heist at the Louvre museum in Paris on Sunday, painting a dismal picture of the country's security protocols. "People were able to park a furniture hoist in the heart of Paris, whisk people up in a matter of minutes to grab priceless jewels, and give France a terrible image," Gérald Darmanin stated.
The thieves, armed with power tools, boldly broke into the world's most-visited museum in broad daylight, stealing eight items described as inestimable in value, before escaping on scooters. There are fears that unless the thieves are swiftly apprehended, the priceless items - including a diamond and emerald necklace Emperor Napoleon bestowed upon his wife - will be dismantled and smuggled out of the country.
The museum announced it would remain closed on Monday following the heist. Darmanin told France Inter radio that he was confident the police would eventually arrest the culprits. However, Chris Marinello, the CEO of Art Recovery International, warned that if the thieves are not caught within the next 24 to 48 hours, the stolen jewellery will likely be "long gone."
"There is a race going on right now," Marinello told the BBC World Service's Newshour program. Crowns and diadems - which were stolen in the heist - can be easily broken apart and sold in small parts. The thieves "are not going to keep them intact; they are going to break them up, melt down the valuable metal, recut the valuable stones, and hide evidence of their crime," he said, adding that it would be difficult to sell these jewels in their entirety.
French police "know that in the next 24 or 48 hours, if these thieves are not caught, those pieces are probably long gone," said Marinello. "They may catch the criminals but they won't recover the jewels."
French Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez acknowledged a "great vulnerability" in museum security in France, with French media reporting that a preliminary report by the Court of Auditors stated that a third of the rooms in the wing where the robbery occurred have no surveillance cameras.
President Emmanuel Macron described the robbery as an "attack on a heritage that we cherish because it is our history." Nathalie Goulet, a member of the French Senate's finance committee, told the BBC it was a "very painful" episode for France. "We are all disappointed and angry," she said, finding it "difficult to understand how it happened so easily."
Goulet informed BBC Radio 4's Today program that the gallery's alarm had recently been tampered with, and "we have to wait for the investigation to know if the alarm was disactivated." She added that the cut-up jewels would be "used in a money laundering system," and expressed her belief that "we are not facing amateurs here. This is organised crime with absolutely no morals. They don't appreciate jewellery as a piece of history; they only see it as a means to clean their dirty money."
The theft occurred between 09:30 and 09:40 local time on Sunday morning, shortly after the museum opened to visitors. Four masked thieves used a truck equipped with a mechanical lift to gain access to the Galerie d'Apollon via a balcony close to the River Seine. Pictures from the scene showed a vehicle-mounted ladder leading up to a first-floor window. Two of the thieves cut through glass panes with a battery-powered disc cutter and entered the museum. They then threatened the guards, who evacuated the building. The thieves smashed the glass display cases and stole the jewels, which collectively contained thousands of diamonds and precious gemstones. The robbery took just seven minutes. As the museum's alarms sounded, staff followed protocol by contacting security forces, according to a culture ministry statement. The thieves had tried to set fire to their vehicle outside but were prevented by an intervention from a museum staff member.
