Stolen Louvre jewels could be melted and sold, warns ex-FBI art expert

The thieves who made off with royal jewelry from the Louvre Museum on Sunday could melt the pieces and find a way to profit from the theft, according to an ex-FBI art crime expert.

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Speaking to Fox News, Tim Carpenter said “they could be melted down or pieced out…They’ll punch stones out of the crowns, and they’ll cut the stones, and they’ll market them individually.”

This is despite the expert saying authorities “have a strong chance” of catching the criminals and possibly recovering the piece.

“I think the local authorities there have a very strong chance of doing a really effective criminal investigation, identifying these perpetrators and hopefully recovering these pieces before they’re lost to us,” Carpenter was quoted as saying.

Authorities continued their hunt on Monday for the band of thieves who stole eight priceless royal pieces of jewelry from the Louvre Museum in the heart of Paris in broad daylight.

Officials said a team of 60 investigators were working on the theory that the raid was planned and executed by an organized crime group.

In France, it reignited a row over the lack of security in France’s museums, which the new Interior Minister Laurent Nunez acknowledged Sunday was a “major weak spot”.

The thieves arrived between 9:30 and 9:40 a.m. local time (0730 and 0740 GMT) Sunday, shortly after the museum opened to the public at 9:00 a.m., a source close to the investigation said.

They used a furniture hoist to get access to the Apollo Gallery, home to the royal collection, and cutting equipment to get in through a window and open the display cases.

A brief clip of the raid, apparently filmed on the phone of a visitor to the museum, was broadcast on French news channels.

The masked thieves stole nine 19th-century items of jewelry, one of which -- the crown of the Empress Eugenie -- was dropped and damaged as they made their escape.

Seven-minute raid

Eight “priceless” items of jewelry were stolen, the culture ministry said Sunday. The list they released included an emerald-and-diamond necklace that Napoleon gave his wife Empress Marie Louise.

Also stolen was a diadem that once belonged to the Empress Eugenie, which has nearly 2,000 diamonds; and a necklace that once belonged to Marie-Amelie, the last queen of France. It has eight sapphires and 631 diamonds, according to the Louvre’s website.

The whole raid took just seven minutes and was thought to have been carried out by an experienced team, possibly “foreigners”, said Nunez.

The intervention of the museum’s staff forced the thieves to flee, leaving behind some of the equipment used in the raid, said the culture ministry in a statement.

With AFP

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