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The historic crown jewels snatched from the Louvre Museum in a daring, lighting-fast heist Sunday are worth more than a staggering $100 million, a Paris prosecutor has revealed.
Paris Public Prosecutor Laure Beccuau told a French radio station Tuesday that about 100 investigators are hunting for the four slick crooks who broke into the world-famous Paris museum and made off with a trove of irreplaceable treasures worth about $102.1 million, or 88 million euros, before fleeing within 7 minutes.
“This sum is indeed extremely spectacular, but we must remember that this damage is economic and that it is in no way comparable to the historical damage caused by this theft,” the magistrate told RTL radio.
The stolen items include a diamond and sapphire tiara that once belonged to Napoleon’s III’s wife Queen Marie-Amelie and Queen Hortense, the daughter of Napoleon Bonaparte’s first wife, Josephine, according to the French Ministry of Culture.
A sapphire necklace and earrings from the collection are also missing, as well as an emerald necklace and earrings that belonged to Marie-Louise, Napoleon’s second wife; a reliquary brooch, which is designed to hold a religious relic; and a tiara and bodice knot belonging to Empress Eugenie.
Experts believe the culprits will melt down the priceless, uninsured diamond artifacts to sell them – but Beccuau insisted the crooks will never reap anything close to the jewels’ true value.
“The criminals won’t earn 88 million euros if they had the very bad idea of unscrewing these jewels and melting them down,” she told the radio station.
“So we can perhaps hope that they’ll think about it and won’t destroy these jewels without reason.”
No suspects have been identified yet in the daring caper, which saw the masked thieves disguised as construction workers break into the world’s most-visited museum and then flee on scooters with the gems, French police said.
Authorities said the “commando of four people” used a construction lift to reach a second-floor window, cut through the glass with an angle grinder and then entered the Apollon Gallery — triggering a security alarm only transmitted to guards focused on visitor safety.
Shocking footage from inside the Louvre shows one of the criminals in a green reflective vest calmly cutting through a glass case surrounding one of the targeted items as visitors watched.
The perpetrators tried and failed to set fire to their mobile ladder before fleeing — and accidentally dropped an emerald-set imperial crown containing more than 1,300 diamonds that once belonged to Empress Eugenie, on their way out, authorities said.
A motorcycle helmet belonging to one of the criminals, as well as a glove, were also recovered, investigators told Le Parisien newspaper.
Beccuau said forensic tests are now under way to pull DNA from the items left behind in the sting.
“Four people have been identified as being present at the scene,” she said. “We can quite imagine that around them there were a whole bunch of teams who helped them carry out this theft.”
