French police may nab Louvre thieves but unlikely to recover loot

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Law enforcement agencies and art experts say crime gangs around Europe are increasingly looting valuable jewelry and gold from cash-intensive museums like the Louvre, but while police often catch the thieves, they struggle to recover the priceless goods.

Experts say only a petty criminal would be fit for a job like Sunday’s daring heist in Paris and may already be known to police. But it can be sold by breaking itself down into component parts.

“If I steal a Van Gogh, it’s a Van Gogh. I can’t dispose of it through any other channel than the illegal art market,” said Marc Balcelles, a Barcelona-based expert in crimes against cultural heritage. “But when I’m stealing […] Jewelry, I can pass it on the illegal market like precious stones. “

The brazen display of crown jewels from the Louvre, the world’s most visited museum, has been dismissed by some as a national disgrace and has sparked security checks at several cultural sites in France.

“If you hit the Louvre, the most important museum in the world, and then get away with the French crown jewels, there was something wrong with the security,” said art investigator Arthur Brand.

Officials at the Louvre, home to works of art such as the Mona Lisa, have already raised the alarm about the lack of investment.

And at least four French museums have been looted in the past two months, according to media reports.

On Tuesday, prosecutors said they had charged a Chinese woman for stealing six gold nuggets worth about 1.5 million euros ($1.75 million) from Paris’s Museum of Natural History last month. He was arrested while trying to dispose of some molten gold in Barcelona, ​​he said.

Christopher Marinello, founder of Art Recovery International, which tracks stolen art, said the museum’s highs are moving across Europe and further afield.

He cited cases in the Netherlands, France, Egypt.

“If you have jewelry or gold in your collections, you need to be concerned,” Marinello said.

Who Dunnett?

Paris prosecutors have handed the investigation to a special unit of the Paris police known as the BRB, which is used to deal with high-profile robberies.

Former police officer Pascal Szczakdalara, who served in the unit, said the BRB handled the 2016 Kim Kardashian investigation, when Paris thieves stole her $4 million engagement ring, as well as the recent mass kidnapping of wealthy crypto owners.

The BRB has about 100 agents, with more than a dozen specializing in museum thefts, he said. Investigators will consider video footage, telephone records and forensic evidence, while informants will also be called in.

“Their teams can work on it 24/7 and for a long time,” Szczecdalara said, expressing “100%” confidence that the thieves would be caught.

Police are trying to identify people in common, going back weeks of security footage, Brand said.

Corinne Chartrell, who previously worked at the French police’s central office to combat trafficking in cultural property, said the jewels could potentially end up in global diamond centers like Antwerp where “there are probably people who are not too concerned about the origin of the objects.”

Diamonds can also be cut into smaller stones and melt gold, leaving buyers unaware of their offering.

If thieves sense a net closure, they can chuck or destroy the loot entirely.

The police are clearly in a race against time.

“Once they’re cut into little jewels, the process is over. It’s over. We’ll never see those pieces intact again,” Marinello said. “It’s a very small percentage, recovering stolen artworks. When it comes to jewelry, that percentage is even lower.”

Brand said any theory about these items by a mystery shopper was laughable. “It’s not unheard of,” he said. “You only see that in Hollywood movies.”

Cultural authorities across Europe will consider how best to protect museums at a time of tight public finances.

Brand said it was impossible to adequately protect a museum, so the best thing to do was to minimize the time it took for objects to be stolen and escape, making police more responsive by thickening windows and display cases or adding more doors.

“They know they only have five, six minutes to get away with it because after six minutes, the police show up. So, if they go to a museum. […] And they find out if it takes more than six, seven, eight minutes, they won’t do it.

“Financial realities mean tough decisions,” said Kumo Lewa, director general of the National Gallery of Finland.

“A tight economy on a day-to-day basis is not, naturally, the best basis for making the investments needed to mitigate potential risks,” Leyva said.