‘Priceless’ crown jewels snatched from Louvre do have a price: £76,000,000

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

Four raiders in high-vis gear smashed their way into the world’s biggest museum in daylight and fled with the ‘priceless’ treasures that once 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 worth an estimated 88 million euros (£76 million), it has been revealed.

However, Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau said that the monetary estimate does not include their historical value to France.

Ms Beccuau, whose office is leading the heist probe, said about 100 investigators are now involved in 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 if they had the very bad idea of disassembling these jewels,’ she said in an interview with broadcaster RTL.

‘We can perhaps hope that they’ll think about this and won’t destroy these jewels without rhyme or reason.’

Also on Tuesday, France’s culture minister said that the security apparatus installed at the Louvre worked properly during the theft.

Questions have arisen about the Louvre security – and whether security cameras might have 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 in the gallery when they entered, but all of them ran away when they were threatened with angle grinders and chainsaws.

‘The Louvre museum’s security apparatus did not fail, that is a fact,’ the minister, Rachida Dati, insisted in the National Assembly. ‘The Louvre museum’s security apparatus worked.’

Ms Dati said she launched an administrative inquiry that comes in addition to a police investigation to ensure full transparency into what happened.

She did not offer any details about how the thieves managed to carry out their heist given 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? Because the Louvre is far more than 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.

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

Officials said the heist lasted less than eight minutes in total, including less than four minutes inside the Louvre.

Mr Nunez did not disclose details about video surveillance cameras that may have filmed the thieves around and in the museum pending a police investigation.

‘There are cameras all around 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, but the theft was already over.

Eight objects were taken, according to officials: a sapphire diadem, necklace and single earring from a matching set linked to 19th-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 19th-century imperial ensemble.

There are fears that those responsible could have been stolen to order by 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 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.