Eight priceless treasures from the Apollo Gallery in the world-famous Louvre have been stolen by chainsaw-wielding robbers.
Authorities are scrambling to find the gang behind the heist that targeted high-security display cases in the famous French museum.
The criminals, who disguised themselves as construction workers on a cherry picker, are still on the run.
Authorities fear the one-of-a-kind, and therefore highly recognisable items, will be melted down and destroyed before thieves sell them on.
There are fears that those responsible could be 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.
So could the infamous gang be behind the Louvre theft?
Members of the Pink Panthers hail from former Yugoslavian states, including Serbia, Montenegro and Bosnia.
Interpol estimates that there are approximately 800 key members of the criminal network worldwide.
The Panthers have a history of targeting museums as well as jewellers. In 2008, a museum in Switzerland had a Monet, Van Gogh, Cézanne and a Degas stolen, with an estimated worth of £119,162,880.
This time around, eight objects were taken: a sapphire diadem, a necklace and a single earring from a matching set linked to 19th-century French queens Marie-Amélie and Hortense; an emerald necklace and earrings from the matching set of Empress Marie-Louise, Napoleon Bonaparte’s second wife; a reliquary brooch; Empress Eugénie’s diadem; and her large corsage-bow brooch.
Security specialist Will Geddes has expertise in extortion, blackmail and tracking down criminals and he told Metro the Louvre robbery has the fingerprints of the Pink Panthers all over it.
‘They’ve been involved in some really massively audacious, exciting, and daring robberies,’ he explained.
‘I think all of this lot was stolen to order, which is why I’ve got a gut feeling it could be the Pink Panthers.
‘We know that they are former military, so highly disciplined, extremely well trained, and they will go very much for items which are either very quickly and easily disposable or will have been robbed to order.
‘This was evidently incredibly well planned, and that’s what the Panthers do. They will plan these operations to the finest degree, and much of it will also be down to timing. We know that when these guys went in, they didn’t go in in the dead of night; they went in at 9:30 in the morning, which in itself is incredibly brave.’
‘Outrageous’ security failures
As the Louvre reopened today, France’s Justice Minister Gérald Darmanin said: ‘We failed and presented a deplorable image of France.’
Referring to France’s ‘Crown Jewels,’ Darmanin conceded that windows and display cabinets were too easily broken into and there were not enough CCTV cameras.
Security guards failed to confront the gang and police did not react to an alarm in time to arrest them.
A leaked report by France’s auditing watchdog – the Cours des Comptes – revealed ‘consistent and persistent delays’ in bringing security up to date in the world’s most visited art museum.
Despite an annual operating budget of £280million, a third of the rooms where the burglary took place in the museum’s Denton Wing had no cameras at all.
‘That’s ridiculous,’ Geddes told Metro. ‘It’s poor security direction and management. If I were the person responsible for the security of that museum, I would be kicking off royally about there not being any cameras.
‘In the place where there are no cameras, that’s where you fortify with physical security guards.’
Geddes previously conducted security testing for a number of high-profile museums in the capital, and told Metro: ‘The National Portrait Gallery, the National Museum, the Wallace Collection, the V&A – after inspecting, one of the things that I came back with was that the security was pretty bad. It was pretty poor.’
Though British museums have since upped their security after Geddes’ testing, he said there will always be ‘blind spots’.
‘You often only find out what those blind spots are when you’ve actually had an actual compromise or an incident like this take place,’ he added.
The amount of time the burglars took inside – just seven minutes – is an ‘exceptionally’ long period of time for a robbery, Geddes said.
‘This shows the high level of planning of these individuals to go, “Great, we can do this.” There are just too many component parts, which lead me to believe this is no ordinary crew. This is a highly organised crew.’
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