Police on Wednesday night arrested five more individuals suspected of having participated in the theft of Napoleon’s jewels from the Louvre on Sunday, October 19. Investigators from the Banditism Suppression Brigade (BRB) arrested the men in the 16th arrondissement of Paris and in the department of Sein-Sain-Denis, according to Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau, a guest this Thursday on the RTL radio morning show. The arrests have accelerated the hypotheses about how close the stolen jewels, valued at around 88 million euros, could be to being found.
Regarding the profile of the five detainees, Beccuau has once again shown himself to be very cautious on French radio. However, he specified that “one of them was one of the investigators’ objectives” since, as the prosecutor explained, they found traces of DNA that linked him to the robbery from the beginning. The other people taken into police custody are individuals “who can provide us with information about the development of the events.”
Could the crown jewels be about to be recovered? The new wave of arrests, 11 days after the incredible robbery at the Louvre Museum in Paris, now fuels that hope that seemed very remote a few days ago. “The four are in police custody, including one of the main suspects in the robbery,” the prosecutor insisted..
Last Saturday, two men, ages 34 and 39, had already been arrested. One of them was arrested in Roissy-Charles-de-Gaulle airport, when he was preparing to leave the country for Algeria. Both were prosecuted on Wednesday night for the crimes of robbery in an organized gang and association of criminals with the aim of committing a crime, and sent to preventive detention.
The Paris prosecutor, Laure Beccuau, also reported that the two detainees “partially” acknowledged their participation in the events. Both people – whose DNA samples have been found at the crime scene – were arrested last Sunday when they were about to leave the country for Mali and Algeria. Beccuau has not provided more information about the suspects’ confession “so as not to interfere in the investigation”, and has asked the investigating judge to charge the two men with crimes of robbery, with a sentence of up to 15 years in prison, and association of criminals, which would add another 10, in addition to requesting preventive detention.
A historic robbery
On October 19, thieves entered the Apollo gallery of the Louvre armed with simple radios and took the jewels in broad daylight. A set of 8,700 diamonds, 34 sapphires, 38 emeralds and more than 200 pearls, a synthesis of centuries of French political history.
The Louvre has now moved some of its most valuable jewels from that same gallery to the Bank of France, which stores the country’s gold reserves in a huge vault located 27 meters underground, and which is just 500 meters from the museum.
Accusations of poor protection at the Louvre have since been so insistent that the Senate summoned Laurence des Cars, the museum’s director, to appear on Wednesday. He assumed his responsibility, admitted obvious failures, especially in non-existent video surveillance outside. “It is an immense wound, we have failed,” he assumed. But, somehow, she came to say that she herself had already warned of the aging of the infrastructure. He also asked to build a police station inside the museum.
A confidential preliminary report from the Court of Auditors, France’s highest audit institution, accuses the Louvre of having an insufficient video surveillance system in its three wings, of having applied severe cuts and delays in spending on security in recent years and of showing a poor prioritization of priorities. The document, which must be officially published in November, points out that security spending in 2024 was much lower than 20 years ago.