Five more arrested in Louvre heist probe – but no sign of $157m jewels

Paris: The dragnet tightened around the Louvre robbers on Friday AEDT, with five more people arrested in the crown-jewels heist – including a suspect linked by DNA – the Paris prosecutor said, widening the sweep across the French capital and its suburbs.

Authorities said three of the four alleged members of the “commando” team, as French media have dubbed the robbers, are in custody.

The late-night operations in Paris and nearby Seine-Saint-Denis increased the total arrests to seven.

Prosecutor Laure Beccuau told RTL that one detainee was suspected of belonging to the brazen quartet that burst into the Louvre’s Apollo Gallery in broad daylight on October 19.

Others held “may be able to inform us about how the events unfolded.”

Beccuau called the response an “exceptional mobilisation” by about 100 investigators, working seven days a week, with roughly 150 forensic samples analysed and 189 items sealed as evidence.

Even so, she said the latest arrests did not uncover the loot – valued about $US102 million ($157m) that includes a diamond-and-emerald necklace Napoleon gave to Empress Marie-Louise as a wedding gift, jewels tied to 19th-century Queens Marie-Amélie and Hortense, and Empress Eugénie’s pearl-and-diamond tiara.

Only one relic has surfaced so far – Eugénie’s crown, damaged but salvageable, dropped in the escape.

“These jewels are now, of course, unsellable … There’s still time to give them back,” Beccuau said.

Experts warn that the gold could be melted and the stones re-cut to erase their past.

The choreography of a four-minute crime

Beccuau disclosed new details of how the robbers planned the October 19 heist at the world’s most-visited museum. Nine days before the raid, thieves stole a truck-mounted lift, the type movers use to reach upper floors, after answering a fake moving ad on the French classifieds site Leboncoin,

On the day itself, the same vehicle idled beneath the Louvre’s riverside facade.

At 9.30am, it rose to the Apollo Gallery window; at 9.34am, the glass gave way; by 9.38, the thieves were gone. It was a four-minute strike.

Only the “near-simultaneous” arrival of police and museum security stopped the gang from torching the lift and preserved crucial traces, the prosecutor said.

Security footage showed at least four men forcing a window, cutting into two display cases with power tools and fleeing on two scooters toward eastern Paris. Investigators said there was no sign of insider help for now, though they are not ruling out a wider network beyond the four caught on camera.

The reckoning over security

French police have acknowledged major gaps in the Louvre’s defences, turning an audacious theft, which was carried out as visitors walked its corridors, into a national reckoning over how France protects its treasures.

Paris police chief Patrice Faure told senators that the first alert to police came not from the Louvre’s security systems but from a cyclist outside, who dialled the emergency line after seeing helmeted men with a basket lift.

He acknowledged that ageing, partly analogue cameras and slow fixes left critical gaps.

A $US93 million ($142m) project to upgrade cabling won’t finish before 2029–30, and the Louvre’s camera authorisation lapsed in July. Officers arrived fast, he said, but the delay came earlier in the chain.

Speaking to the Associated Press, former bank robber David Desclos characterised the heist as textbook and said he had warned the Louvre of glaring vulnerabilities in the layout of the Apollo Gallery. The Louvre has not responded to the claim.

Who’s charged already?

Two earlier suspects, men aged 34 and 39 from Aubervilliers, north of Paris, were charged on Wednesday with theft by an organised gang and criminal conspiracy after nearly 96 hours in custody.

Beccuau said both gave “minimalist” statements and “partially admitted” their involvement.

One was stopped at Charles-de-Gaulle Airport with a one-way ticket to Algeria; his DNA matched a scooter used in the getaway.

French law typically keeps active investigations under a shroud of secrecy to protect police work and the privacy of victims. Only the prosecutor may speak publicly, though in high-profile cases, police unions have occasionally shared partial details.

AP