Petty criminals — not pros — executed Louvre heist: French prosecutor

Petty criminals executed the French crown jewel Louvre heist, not an organized crime ring, Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau said, adding yet another twist to the shocking case.

“This is not quite everyday delinquency … but it is a type of delinquency that we do not generally associate with the upper echelons of organized crime,” Beccuau told Franceinfo radio on Sunday.

The four suspects charged so far in connection with the theft were all living in Seine-Saint-Denis, a working-class neighbourhood north of Paris, and are “clearly local people,” she said.

Two of the male suspects were known to the police before the robbery and had multiple theft convictions.

One of the men is a 37-year-old with 1o prior robbery convictions.

Beccuau said he has “a varied criminal record but not one which would normally suggest involvement with organized crime.” Another suspect has two prior robbery convictions, she added.

The two men were convicted for their involvement in the same robbery in Paris in 2015, she said.

On Saturday, a 38-year-old woman was charged with complicity in organized theft and criminal conspiracy with the intent to commit a crime.

Beccuau said the 37-year-old man and the woman charged over the weekend are a couple and have children, but she did not provide further details.

Investigators believe that four men carried out the heist, with one reportedly still at large.

When probed about the profile of the suspects, Beccuau told the radio station, “I don’t find it that surprising. What we are seeing now is that people with no significant association with organized crime are progressing relatively quickly to committing extremely serious crimes.”

A four-person team ransacked the Louvre’s Apollo Gallery in broad daylight on Oct. 19 after entering through a broken window.

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The stolen jewels — a trove valued at around US$102 million — have not been recovered, except for one relic: Eugénie’s crown, damaged but salvageable, after the suspects dropped it during their escape.

Still missing is a diamond-and-emerald necklace Napoleon gave to Empress Marie-Louise as a wedding gift, as well as pieces tied to 19th-century queens Marie-Amélie and Hortense, and Empress Eugénie’s pearl-and-diamond tiara.

It took thieves — who used a cherry picker to scale the building’s exterior walls — less than eight minutes to break into the world’s most visited museum, a feat the museum’s director called a “terrible failure.”

The robbers stole the cherry picker used to reach the building’s upper floors nine days before the breach occurred.

Security footage shows the crew ascending to the Apollo Gallery window at 9:30 a.m. on the day of the raid. By 9:38, the suspects had departed, carrying loot, as they sped away on scooters.

According to investigators, there is no evidence of insider help at this time, but they’re not ruling out a wider network beyond the four suspects caught on security cameras.