‘A Cartier store is better protected’: Louvre heist puts spotlight on security | Paris

TInfiltrating the world’s most visited museum in broad daylight, taking eight pieces of priceless Napoleonic jewels, and getting lost in Paris traffic on modest scooters may seem like the most daring crimes committed for international fame and subsequent Hollywood movie treatments.

But experts who monitor trends in international art crimes see Sunday morning’s robbery at the Louvre as a more mundane event: The latest in a series of smash-and-grab thefts focused on the monetary value of precious stones or metals rather than the significance of the works of art; It continued a pattern that had emerged over the past decade in Germany, the UK and the US. They argue that location is of secondary importance to criminals.

“You may ask why thieves who want to steal expensive jewelry enter a world-famous museum rather than a Cartier store,” said Christopher A Marinello, a leading expert in the recovery of stolen works of art. “The answer is simple: Because a Cartier store is better maintained these days.”

A rash of jewelery shop thefts mean many shops have stepped up their security in recent years, with armed guards on the premises and goods are no longer on display overnight. Museums, meanwhile, appear to be more open, partly for the well-established reason of being public institutions in historic buildings and partly because of the current economic climate in many western countries.

“Since Covid, governments around the world have cut back on law enforcement and the cultural sector,” Marinello said. “If thieves can break into the Louvre, it shows how vulnerable our institutions have become. It’s a terrible time to be a museum.”

Necklaces consisting of eight sapphires and 631 diamonds, the crown of Empress Eugénie, containing approximately 2,000 diamonds, and the crown of Empress Eugénie, which once belonged to Henry III. The theft of objects, including an extremely valuable crown belonging to Napoleon’s wife, which thieves dropped by the roadside on their way out, inevitably led to comparisons with the 1911 theft of the Mona Lisa from the same museum. Italian mechanic Vincenzo Peruggia.

Better reference points might be the theft of jewelery worth more than €113 million from the Green Vault Museum in Dresden in 2019, the theft of a gold toilet worth £4.75 million from Blenheim Palace in the same year, the theft of a large gold coin from the Bode Museum in Berlin in 2017, or even a series of jewel thefts. Sports memorabilia from US mining museums.

It turned out that in each case the crimes were mostly motivated by the monetary value of the objects that disappeared. “There’s a simple pattern here,” Marinello said. “Smash, capture and melt as quickly as possible.”

Experts say that if the artifacts remain intact, thieves will have difficulty finding buyers. “There’s no way to sell something as readily identifiable as the Louvre’s jewels on the legal market,” said Lynda Albertson of the Association for the Investigation of Crimes Against Art, an organization that tracks trends in museums including theft and vandalism.

“They will be instantly recognisable, especially given that the Ministry of Culture publishes images of the works. Even a private collector or an auction house such as Sotheby’s or Christie’s would want to see paperwork proving proper ownership before touching such striking pieces.”

In the past, museums were often reluctant to make public statements about the disappearance of well-known works of art, remaining silent out of embarrassment. These days, when art thefts are more widely publicized, the storage and sale of stolen art is a risky business for any criminal.

“If you steal a Picasso, it has to remain intact, otherwise it becomes worthless, and you have to devise a plan to hide it, perhaps by distributing it to elusive criminal actors,” Marinello said. “And you run the constant risk of an accomplice telling the police to cash out the ransom.”

For similar reasons, art detective Arthur Brand said it was almost improbable that the theft was ordered. As did the Dutch media reported to be valid for gold Dacian treasures Stolen from Drents Museum in January in the Netherlands. “Being stolen to order is something out of Hollywood movies,” he said. “Nobody touches this. It’s in all the newspapers, all over the world. If you buy this, if you get caught, you’ll go to jail. You can’t show this to your friends, you can’t leave it to your children.”

Replacing stolen works by melting or re-cutting them reduces their value. When it comes to diamonds, it also carries a significant risk because contemporary cutting techniques give stones a larger, lighter surface area, and antique cut stones will either attract unwanted attention or drive the price down to cover it up.

But most importantly, melting or recutting eliminates evidence of the crime. “My guess is that the Louvre thieves will take the stolen goods to places with diamond expertise, such as Israel, India or even Antwerp, and try to find someone to cut the jewels,” Marinello said.

The robbery at the Louvre has already raised questions about security measures at the museum; A leaked government auditor report criticizing “significant” and “persistent” delays in updating equipment and stating that security cameras were missing in many rooms is expected to be released next month. However, security experts say that displaying valuable items in historical buildings with a constant flow of visitors brings with it risks that cannot be completely eliminated.

“It’s much harder to preserve historic buildings,” said Erin Thompson, an art crime professor at the City University of New York. “Many have nice big windows facing the street, which makes it easier for thieves to get away, and they may have building protection laws that mean you can’t fit them with proper bulletproof glass.”

The most robust security systems for buildings should be conceptualized “like a castle,” said Peter Stürmann of German security company VZM, which advises museums and archives. “There must be several layers to repel attackers.”

Modern buildings are equipped with state-of-the-art external CCTV cameras or built-in seismic detectors that sound a real-time alarm about a broken window, but older museums may be reluctant to disfigure their exteriors. Laser scanners can be difficult to install in plastered ceilings. Motion and sound detectors may also need to be disabled as many visitors pass through the museum during the day.

Stürmann said the timing of the Louvre raid, which took place between 09:30 and 09:40 local time, was typical of recent thefts. “There’s a good reason why thefts often occur during opening or closing hours. This usually occurs before guards change their shifts and the museum fills with visitors who effectively serve as additional security personnel.”

Technological advancement may have led to new devices that can activate the alarm more quickly and efficiently, but it has also given thieves new tools with which to bypass security measures. In Paris, robbers reached a first-floor window of a museum using a vehicle-mounted ladder and cut a glass plate with a battery-powered disc cutter.

Elaine Sciolino, author of Adventures in the Louvre: How to Fall in Love with the World’s Greatest Museum, said conversations about the 232-year-old building in France have focused mostly on crowd control and less on security in recent years.

The museum has a brigade of approximately 50 permanent firefighters or sapeurs-pompiersbut their role is mainly to protect the collection from fires and floods. “There is no rapid response unit,” Sciolino said. “Ultimately, the security of the Louvre depends on political will and money, and at the moment France has no money.”

Additional report by Şenay Boztaş