‘Priceless’ crown jewels stolen from Louvre have a price: £76,000,000 | News World

The gang disguised as construction staff that broke into the Louvre got away with a really big haul indeed.

4 raiders in high-vis gear smashed their way into the world’s biggest museum in daylight and fled with the ‘priceless’ treasures that after belonged to Napoleon.

No suspects have yet been caught with eight of the items from the Louvre collection still missing.

The crown jewels snatched were value an estimated 88 million euros (£76 million), it has been revealed.

Nonetheless, Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau said that the monetary estimate doesn’t include their historical value to France.

Ms Beccuau, whose office is leading the heist probe, said about 100 investigators are actually involved within the police hunt for the suspects and gems after Sunday’s brazen theft.

‘The wrongdoers who took these gems won’t earn 88 million euros in the event that they had the very bad idea of disassembling these jewels,’ she said in an interview with broadcaster RTL.

‘We are able to perhaps hope that they’ll take into consideration this and won’t destroy these jewels without rhyme or reason.’

Also on Tuesday, France’s culture minister said that the safety apparatus installed on the Louvre worked properly throughout the theft.

Questions have arisen concerning the Louvre security – and whether security cameras might need failed – after thieves rode a basket lift up the museum’s facade, forced open a window, smashed display cases and fled with priceless Napoleonic jewels.

Two of the thieves proceeded to slice their way through the window using a handheld disc cutter.

Five security guards were on duty within the gallery once they entered, but all of them ran away once they were threatened with angle grinders and chainsaws.

‘The Louvre museum’s security apparatus didn’t fail, that could be a fact,’ the minister, Rachida Dati, insisted within the National Assembly. ‘The Louvre museum’s security apparatus worked.’

Ms Dati said she launched an administrative inquiry that comes along with a police investigation to make sure full transparency into what happened.

She didn’t offer any details about how the thieves managed to perform their heist provided that the cameras were working, but she described it as a painful blow for the nation.

The heist was ‘a wound for all of us’, she said. ‘Why? Since the Louvre is excess of the world’s largest museum. It’s a showcase for our French culture and our shared patrimony.’

Interior minister Laurent Nunez said on Monday that the museum’s alarm was triggered when the window of the Apollo Gallery was forced.

Cops arrived on site two or three minutes after they were called by an person that witnessed the scene, he said on LCI television.

Officials said the heist lasted lower than eight minutes in total, including lower than 4 minutes contained in the Louvre.

Mr Nunez didn’t disclose details about video surveillance cameras which will have filmed the thieves around and within the museum pending a police investigation.

‘There are cameras throughout the Louvre,’ he said.

Sunday’s theft focused on the Apollo Gallery, where the Crown Diamonds are displayed. Alarms brought Louvre agents to the room, forcing the intruders to bolt, however the theft was already over.

Eight objects were taken, based on officials: a sapphire diadem, necklace and single earring from an identical set linked to Nineteenth-century French queens Marie-Amelie and Hortense; an emerald necklace and earrings from the matching set of Empress Marie-Louise, Napoleon Bonaparte’s second wife; a reliquary brooch; and Empress Eugenie’s diadem and her large corsage-bow brooch, a prized Nineteenth-century imperial ensemble.

There are fears that those responsible might have been stolen to order by a part of the ‘Pink Panthers’ – a gang which previously stole £23,000,000 of diamonds from Graff jewellers in London back in 2003.

Many members of the gang are ex-soldiers with extensive backgrounds in paramilitary training.

Members of the Pink Panthers hail from former Yugoslavian states, including Serbia, Montenegro and Bosnia.

Interpol estimates that there are roughly 800 key members of the criminal network worldwide.

The Panthers have a history of targeting museums in addition to jewellers. In 2008, a museum in Switzerland had a Monet, Van Gogh, Cézanne and a Degas stolen, with an estimated value of £119,162,880.

MORE: Shoplifting gang filled secret room stuffed with £50,000-worth of games consoles

MORE: Teeth-whitening salon boss who sexually assaulted women he ‘lured’ jailed for 26 years

MORE: Nigeria is using a paramilitary to combat phone thieves – can London learn from it?