World News Actuality Presented By Claire Evren Last month’s jewellery heist at the Louvre museum was carried out by petty criminals rather than organised crime professionals, Paris’s prosecutor has said

World News Actuality Presented By Claire Evren

Last month’s jewellery heist at the Louvre museum was carried out by petty criminals rather than organised crime professionals, Paris’s prosecutor has said.

Gone in seven minutes: How the Louvre heist unfolded
France’s crown jewels are missing — stolen from the world’s largest museum.

Officials said the jewels stolen in the Oct. 19 heist have not been recovered.

On the day of the heist, the suspects arrived, just after the museum opened to visitors, with a stolen vehicle-mounted mechanical lift to gain access to the Galerie d’Apollon (Gallery of Apollo) via a balcony close to the River Seine. The men used a disc cutter to crack open display cases housing the jewellery.

Prosecutors said the thieves were inside for four minutes and made their escape on two scooters waiting outside at 09:38, before switching to cars.

One of the stolen items – a crown – was dropped during the escape. The other seven jewels have not been found.

“This is not quite everyday delinquency… but it is a type of delinquency that we do not generally associate with the upper echelons of organized crime,” Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau.

The prosecutor said the search for the jewels was continuing.

“All avenues are being explored,” she said, adding the treasures “could be used for money laundering”.

“We are examining all the possibilities offered by the black market for selling this jewellery, which I hope will not happen any time soon.”

Five further suspects were arrested as part of French authorities’ investigation into the infamous Louvre heist.

Asked whether she found the profile of the suspects unusual, Beccuau replied: “I don’t find it that surprising. What we are seeing now is that people with no significant association with organized crime are progressing relatively quickly to committing extremely serious crimes.”

French Interior Minister Laurent Nunez told French daily Le Parisien that he believed the one suspect still on the run was probably the organizer of the heist.

French media have speculated that the robbers were amateurs, as they dropped the most precious of the jewels – Empress Eugenie’s crown, made of gold, emerald and diamonds – during their flight, left tools and other items at the scene, and failed to set fire to the movers’ truck before fleeing.

Shortly after the theft it was revealed by the Louvre’s director that the only camera monitoring the Galerie d’Apollon was pointing away from a balcony the thieves climbed over to break in.

Since the incident, security measures have been tightened around France’s cultural institutions.

The Louvre has transferred some of its most precious jewels to the Bank of France following the heist.