Louvre Heist Work of Petty Criminals, Not Organised Crime, Prosecutor Says
Paris: The daring daylight theft of $102 million worth of historic jewels from Paris’s Louvre Museum last month was carried out by petty criminals rather than professionals from the world of organized crime, a Paris prosecutor said Sunday.
On a Sunday morning two weeks ago, two men parked a transport elevator outside the Louvre, went up to the second floor, smashed a window, smashed open display cases with an angle grinder, and then escaped on the back of scooters driven by two accomplices in a robbery that lasted less than seven minutes.
Authorities say that as three of the four suspected thieves have now been arrested and the jewels are believed to still be missing, their profiles do not resemble Ocean’s Eleven-style professional gangsters, but small-time criminals from Paris’ tough northern suburbs.
“This is not an everyday crime… but it is a type of criminality that we do not usually associate with the upper echelons of organized crime,” Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau told franceinfo radio. he said.
PROSECUTOR WAS ‘CLEARLY SUSPECT OF INDIGENOUS PEOPLE’
He said the profiles of the four people arrested so far – including the girlfriend of one of the suspected robbers – were not typical of organized crime professionals who could carry out complex operations.
“These are clearly locals. They all live more or less in Seine-Saint-Denis,” he said, referring to a low-income area north of Paris.
French Interior Minister Laurent Nunez told French newspaper Le Parisien that he believed the only suspect still at large was probably the organizer of the robbery.
French media suggested that the robbers were amateurs because during their flight they dropped the most valuable of the jewels (Empress Eugenie’s crown made of gold, emeralds and diamonds), left the tools, gloves and other items at the scene, and did not set fire to the transporter’s truck before escaping.
A week after the raid, police arrested two men suspected of breaking into the Louvre Museum: a 34-year-old Algerian who had been living in France since 2010 and was detained by police while trying to board a flight to Algeria, and a 39-year-old who was already under judicial custody for aggravated theft.
Both lived in Aubervilliers, north of Paris, and had “partially acknowledged” their involvement, Beccuau said last week.
Two more suspects, a 37-year-old man and a 38-year-old woman, were arrested on October 29, opens a new tab and charged on Saturday.
‘AT LEAST ONE PERSON IS STILL MISSING IN THE HEIST GROUP
Based on DNA found in the truck, the 37-year-old man is believed to be part of the four-man group that carried out the robbery, Beccuau said.
He said he had 11 criminal convictions for a range of offences, including traffic-related offences, aggravated burglary and attempting to break into an automatic teller machine.
He said he was in a relationship with the 38-year-old woman and they had children together, adding that he and one of the two other men arrested were convicted of the same robbery in 2015.
Traces of the woman’s DNA were also found on the movers’ truck, but Beccuau said they appeared to have been transferred to the truck, possibly by a person or object that was later placed in the vehicle.
Both denied involvement in the robbery, the prosecutor’s office said on Saturday.
BFM television reported that the woman burst into tears when she heard that she would remain in custody and shouted, “I’m afraid for my children, I’m afraid for myself.”
His lawyer, Adrien Sorrentino, told BFM that he denies all charges and will consider appealing his detention.
Asked if authorities believed three of the four Louvre robbers had been arrested, Beccuau said “at least one person is still missing.” He did not rule out the possibility that he might have other accomplices.
Three people arrested with the couple on October 29 were released without charge, the prosecutor’s office said on Saturday.
