What gold's got to do with the Louvre heist

What gold’s got to do with the Louvre heist

French officials are facing some big questions following the theft of priceless treasures from one of the world’s most famous art museums, the Louvre in Paris. It’s home to 35,000 exhibits, including Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa. But instead of art masterpieces, the thieves stole 8 items from the French Crown Jewels, and police suspect the high value of gold could be a factor… So, in this Squiz Shortcut, we’ll cover:

• the significance of what was stolen

• where the investigation is up to

• and what’s driving a rise in these types of crimes…

Prefer this in your ears?

Listen to our podcast 🎧

Listen time: 11 minutes

Squiz the Shortcut

The Louvre is one building in the world I assumed would have state-of-the-art security…
Yep, it’s the kind of place we thought would have laser beam trigger hairs running across it that Brad Pitt has to parkour through. But this isn’t the movies, and breaking into one of the most famous art museums in the world to steal the Crown Jewels turned out to be a much simpler operation.

Run me through the details…
Bien sûr… On Sunday 19 October, at around 9.30am (half an hour after the museum opened to the public), thieves drove a small truck to the side of the building. There’s some construction work going on at the moment, so the sight of a truck parked on the footpath wasn’t unusual. 

What part of the museum did they park outside of?
The truck was positioned outside the Apollo Gallery. It’s where the remaining pieces of the French Crown Jewels are on display.

How exactly did they get in?
Police say there were 4 intruders at the scene in balaclavas - one wore a high-vis construction vest. At least 2 of them used a small basket lift attached to the truck to reach a balcony, then a disc cutter to cut out a window panel to get in. Inside, reports say they went straight to the glass cabinets, smashed small holes in them and took 9 pieces of jewellery. They left the same way they came in, before driving off on scooters.

It sounds so simple…
It does, but French Prosecutor Laure Beccuau says it has the hallmarks of an extremely well-mapped out operation, and likely involves an insider working with an organised crime ring.. 

Were there security cameras outside?
There was one for that facade, but it was facing in the opposite direction to where the thieves entered. Reports say there is digital evidence that a member of the security staff was in contact with suspects ahead of the heist. Beccuau says it’s likely the thieves knew it was a blind spot and exploited it.  

What did they take…
A matching set of emerald earrings and a necklace that Napoleon Bonaparte - the first Emperor of France after the Revolution - gave to his second wife, Empress Marie Louise… Also from the House of Bonaparte, 2 diamond brooches and a pearl and diamond tiara belonging to Empress Eugénie - she was married to Napoleon III, who was the last Emperor of France until 1870. Her emerald crown (containing 1,300 diamonds) was also stolen, but it was found a few streets away, and it’s thought that the thieves accidentally dropped it. 

Anything else?
Yes… There was also a sapphire and diamond set made up of a tiara, necklace, and a single earring linked to Queens Marie-Amélie and Hortense also stolen. So, a lot of history right there, that just vanished into Parisian traffic in a heist that French media say took less than 7 minutes from start to finish. 

What are the pieces worth?
Their historical value is priceless, but their worth in dollars is estimated to be around $157 million… And it could’ve been a lot more if the Crown Diamonds - the Regent, Sancy and Hortensia - were also taken. The Regent diamond alone is worth more than $90 million. 

Tell me about the French Crown Jewels…
For some quick context, the French Crown Jewels were passed down from monarch to monarch from the 8th Century until the late 1700s, when many of them were dispersed or stolen during the French Revolution. After that, Napoleon and his wives had crowns and jewels made, which formed a new collection and that was added to by their ancestors, but the French state again sold most of it off in 1887… 

How did it get them back?
In more modern times, the Louvre has been trying to recover those items, with the help of philanthropists who’ve chipped in, and these were the jewels on display in the Apollo Gallery. As French President Emmanuel Macron put it last week: the theft was “an attack on a heritage that we cherish because it is our history”.

So, what went wrong with the museum’s security?
Around 20,000 people a day walk through the Louvre, and experts say the building, which dates back to the 1500s in its current form, isn’t cut out for that many. So, along with extensions, there’s a security upgrade rolling out too, but the current systems weren’t up to the job, and that was acknowledged by the Louvre’s director, Laurence des Cars, last week. She said there had been a “terrible failure” of security, including “highly insufficient” camera coverage of the outside walls.

Where is the investigation up to?
Police have arrested 2 people (one based on DNA evidence from items left at the scene). Reports say one of the men was at Charles de Gaulle Airport with plans to board a flight to Algeria, and the other was headed for Mali. In the meantime, more than 100 investigators from France’s organised crime squad and specialists in art theft are working against the clock to find the remaining 2 suspects and recover the jewels.

Why are they up against time?
One theory is that the thieves targeted the jewellery for its parts. Some crime experts say that due to the high profile of the jewels, it’s unlikely they’ll be sold intact on the black market to private collectors. So investigators want to find the pieces before they’re potentially dismantled, melted down for their precious metals, and lost forever. 

Why would the thieves do that?
To cash in on the high price of gold at the moment… Authorities say this is a type of crime they’re seeing more of. Raids on museums storing high-end jewellery and gold artefacts are becoming increasingly common (and brazen) following a steep jump in the price of gold over the past year. And French museums have been targeted numerous times in the past few months.

What else has happened?
On the same day that the Louvre was robbed, 2,000 antique gold and silver coins worth nearly $155,000 were stolen from the Maison des Lumières (House of Enlightenment) in Langres, in France’s northeast. And last month, a Chinese woman stole $2.6 million worth of gold nuggets from Paris's Natural History Museum. She was charged last week in connection with the robbery after being caught in Spain trying to sell an amount of melted-down gold. And there’s an Oz connection…

What’s that?
One of the largest stolen nuggets was originally from Australia and weighed 5kg - and to give you an idea of the money involved, it’d fetch just over $1 million at current gold prices… And it’s not just limited to France. In January, robbers blew off the door to the Drents Museum in the Netherlands to steal exhibits, one of which was a gold helmet dating from around 450 BC.

Is anything else driving the rise?
Experts reckon it’s also due to our increasingly cashless society - without banks and shops to rob for cash, criminals without cyber skills are turning to museum grabs - and they’re finding the security in place isn’t much of a match… 

So what’s next for French police?
Prosecutor Beccuau says the huge amount of media coverage has given her some “small hope” that the criminals “won’t dare move too much with the jewels” and if quick action is taken, they could still be recovered. And with the Louvre’s security holes now known by the entire world, the museum’s not taking any more chances. 

What’s their contingency plan?
Other pieces from the Crown Jewels were transferred under police guard to the Bank of France last Friday. The bank stores the country’s gold reserves in a massive vault 27m underground, so prospective thieves will need more than a disc cutter and a construction vest to infiltrate that. Even Brad Pitt would struggle…

Bulk gift cards without the admin headache

If wrangling gift cards for team birthdays or customer thank-yous falls to you, GroupTogether just launched bulk eGift cards. Upload a spreadsheet with the names and amounts, and send up to 1,000 digital gift cards in one go. Recipients get an AnyCard with access to 100+ big-name retailers. Check out GroupTogether's bulk eGift cards solution because, let’s be honest, it’s probably easier than your current process...

Onto our Recommendations

Reading: This article in The Conversation which explores a couple of theories as to what might happen to the stolen jewels. 

Scrolling: As serious as this crime is, the internet has been having a field day… We've found roundups of memes ⁠here⁠ and ⁠here⁠ including a cheeky ad by the German company who made the basket lift, featuring the tagline: “If you’re in a hurry”. 

Watching:  This footage of the thieves escaping via the basket lift and scooters.

Recent Shortcuts