French police revealed that they are hunting a “commando” of four robbers who pulled off the daring heist of priceless valuables at the Louvre on Sunday — and now they’ve got some key evidence.
No suspects have been identified yet in the daring caper, which saw the crew break into the world-famous museum, swipe millions of dollars in historic jewels and then flee — all within 4 to 7 minutes.
Culture Minister Rachida Dati told the French TV station TF1 that the robbers were “experienced” and had carefully planned the sensational burglary.
Interior Minister Laurent Nunez confirmed that the suspects are a “commando of four people.”
The country’s specialized police unit that handles major robberies, along with an arm that tracks antiquities crimes, are on the case.
Foreign organized crime has not been ruled out as being behind the caper, but authorities are currently treating the gang as domestic criminals, according to French officials.
Either way, the thieves will look to get the jewels out of Europe as quickly as possible, experts have warned, given the impossibility of selling them legally on the continent.
“Too well-known, too well-documented, too easily traceable,” jewelry exert Juliane Desol told Le Figaro newspaper.
Speculation is also growing that the gang had help from someone inside the gallery to pull off the shocking raid.
“The perpetrators must be at least a little professional because it takes determination and knowledge of the flaws in the system,” respected lawyer Thibault de Montbrial told the “Points de Vue” program Monday.
“I would put a little money on internal complicity,” he said.
On Monday, police recovered a motorcycle helmet belonging to one of the criminals, as well as a glove, in the basket of the truck, investigators told Le Parisien newspaper.
Those items — along with a crown that once belonged to the Empress of France, was swiped during the heist and then accidentally left behind on the street — mean that investigators have DNA evidence for the perpetrators.
Police have also traced the origin of the construction lift that the robbers brazenly parked outside the Louvre and used to hoist themselves up to the Apollo Gallery, where they broke in and made off with the French equivalent of the crown jewels.
The truck had been stolen after the gang allegedly answered a classified ad.
They assaulted its owner, who has not been identified, after answering the post on the French classified ads site Leboncoin and turning up at his house in the small town called — of all things — Louvres, 15 miles northeast of Paris.
The truck, often used for moving furniture in and out of apartments, was abandoned by the four robbers, along with its keys, as the bandits took off on motorized scooters after their robbery.
The thieves had tried to set fire to the vehicle before fleeing but gave up and zoomed off on their cycles.
The robbery has set up a race against time to find the stolen objects — which include bejeweled necklaces and earrings and a tiara.
The real danger is that the thieves will merely dismantle them, extract their gems and melt down their precious metals for resale.
“Their value far exceeds the price of the metal: They carry a story,” Desol said, explaining that the more likely future for the stolen jewelry is dismantlement and selling for scrap.
“The stones will be unset, the settings melted down, the volumes reduced, the sizes modified,” she said, adding that record commodity prices for precious metals were making such brazen heists worth the risk for criminal gangs.
“With gold at more than 111 Euros [$128] a gram,” these crimes are more likely, she said.
“Since COVID and the current conflicts, the price of gold is very high. If we do not find them quickly, these pieces will leave Europe very quickly,” Desol warned.
India is one of the main hubs for smuggling stolen metals, according to a recent study by the Canadian natural resources group IMPACT and cited by Le Figaro.
The country takes in, reworks and re-exports such metals on an enormous scale, resulting in the “legitimization” of such gold and other materials, according to the report.
French politicians have called for the Louvre’s director and security chief to resign over the robbery.
“For the past 24 hours, France has been the laughing stock of the world because of the ridiculous theft of the Crown Jewels from the Louvre,” Marion Maréchal of the right-wing Identity-Liberties party wrote on X.
“This humiliation cannot go unchallenged,” she said, adding that France’s minister for culture, Rachida Dati, “must demand the immediate resignation of the museum’s director Laurence Des Cars and the security chief Dominique Buffin, whom she appointed.”
