Petty criminals executed the French crown jewel Louvre heist, not an organized crime ring, Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau mentioned, including yet one more twist to the stunning case.
“This isn’t fairly on a regular basis delinquency … however it’s a sort of delinquency that we don’t usually affiliate with the higher echelons of organized crime,” Beccuau advised Franceinfo radio on Sunday.
The 4 suspects charged to date in reference to the theft have been all dwelling in Seine-Saint-Denis, a working-class neighbourhood north of Paris, and are “clearly native individuals,” she mentioned.
Two of the male suspects have been recognized to the police earlier than the theft and had a number of theft convictions.
One of many males is a 37-year-old with 10 prior theft convictions.
Beccuau mentioned he has “a different felony report however not one which might usually recommend involvement with organized crime.” One other suspect has two prior theft convictions, she added.
The 2 males have been convicted for his or her involvement in the identical theft in Paris in 2015, she mentioned.
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On Saturday, a 38-year-old girl was charged with complicity in organized theft and felony conspiracy with the intent to commit against the law.
Beccuau mentioned the 37-year-old man and the lady charged over the weekend are a pair and have youngsters, however she didn’t present additional particulars.
Investigators consider that 4 males carried out the heist, with one reportedly nonetheless at massive.
When probed in regards to the profile of the suspects, Beccuau advised the radio station, “I don’t discover it that shocking. What we’re seeing now could be that folks with no important affiliation with organized crime are progressing comparatively shortly to committing extraordinarily severe crimes.”
A four-person crew ransacked the Louvre’s Apollo Gallery in broad daylight on Oct. 19 after getting into via a damaged window.
The stolen jewels — a trove valued at round US$102 million — haven’t been recovered, aside from one relic: Eugénie’s crown, broken however salvageable, after the suspects dropped it throughout their escape.
Nonetheless lacking is a diamond-and-emerald necklace Napoleon gave to Empress Marie-Louise as a marriage reward, in addition to items tied to Nineteenth-century queens Marie-Amélie and Hortense, and Empress Eugénie’s pearl-and-diamond tiara.
Necklace and earrings from the emerald set of Napoleon I’s second spouse Empress Marie Louise on show within the Apollo’s gallery housing the royal assortment of gems and diamonds of the French crown in Paris on Might 20, 2021.
MAEVA DESTOMBES/Hans Lucas/AFP through Getty Photos
It took thieves — who used a cherry picker to scale the constructing’s exterior partitions — lower than eight minutes to interrupt into the world’s most visited museum, a feat the museum’s director known as a “horrible failure.”
The robbers stole the cherry picker used to succeed in the constructing’s higher flooring 9 days earlier than the breach occurred.
Safety footage exhibits 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.
Based on investigators, there isn’t a proof of insider assist at the moment, however they’re not ruling out a wider community past the 4 suspects caught on safety cameras.
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