Experts warn the gold could be melted and the stones re-cut to erase their past.
The choreography of a four-minute crime
Key planning details have snapped into focus. Nine days before the raid, thieves stole a truck-mounted lift, the type movers use to reach upper floors, after answering a fake moving ad on the French classifieds site Leboncoin, Beccuau said on Wednesday.
On the day itself, the same vehicle idled beneath the Louvre’s riverside façade.
A soldier patrols in the courtyard of the Louvre museum on Thursday.Credit: AP
At 9:30am it rose to the Apollo Gallery window; at 9:34am the glass gave way; by 9:38 the crew was gone. It was a four-minute strike.
Only the “near-simultaneous” arrival of police and museum security stopped the thieves from torching the lift and preserved crucial traces, the prosecutor said.
Security footage shows at least four men forcing a window, cutting into two display cases with power tools and fleeing on two scooters toward eastern Paris. Investigators say there is no sign of insider help for now, though they are not ruling out a wider network beyond the four on camera.
The reckoning over security
French police have acknowledged major gaps in the Louvre’s defences, turning an audacious theft, which was carried out as visitors walked its corridors, into a national reckoning over how France protects its treasures.
Paris police chief Patrice Faure told senators the first alert to police came not from the Louvre’s security systems but from a cyclist outside who dialled the emergency line after seeing helmeted men with a basket lift.
He acknowledged that aging, partly analog cameras and slow fixes left seams.
The $93 million ($142m) of cabling work won’t finish before 2029–30, and the Louvre’s camera authorisation even lapsed in July. Officers arrived fast, he said, but the delay came earlier in the chain.
Speaking to AP, former bank robber David Desclos characterised the heist as textbook and said he had warned the Louvre of glaring vulnerabilities in the layout of the Apollo Gallery. The Louvre has not responded to the claim.
Who’s charged already
Two earlier suspects, men aged 34 and 39 from Aubervilliers, north of Paris, were charged on Wednesday with theft by an organised gang and criminal conspiracy after nearly 96 hours in custody. Beccuau said both gave “minimalist” statements and “partially admitted” their involvement.
One was stopped at Charles-de-Gaulle Airport with a one-way ticket to Algeria; his DNA matched a scooter used in the getaway.
DNA collected at the scene led to the arrest of one suspect.Credit: Getty Images
French law normally keeps active investigations under a shroud of secrecy to protect police work and victims’ privacy. Only the prosecutor may speak publicly, though in high-profile cases police unions have occasionally shared partial details.
The brazen smash-and-grab inside the world’s most-visited museum stunned the heritage world. Four men, a lift truck and a stopwatch turned the Apollo Gallery’s blaze of gold and light into a crime scene — and a test of how France guards what it holds most dear.
