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Two men arrested on suspicion of stealing crown jewels worth an estimated €88m (£76m) from the Louvre in Paris have “partially admitted” their role in the heist, the prosecutor has said, but police are no closer to recovering the gems.
Laure Beccuau said the pair, arrested on Sunday, would be brought before magistrates “with a view to being charged with organised theft, which carries a 15-year prison sentence, and criminal conspiracy, punishable by 10 years”.
Beccuau told a media conference on Wednesday, hours before the two men had to be either charged or released, that the jewels “are not in our possession”. But, in an apparent appeal to the thieves, she added: “There is still time to give them back.”
The treasures were “clearly unsellable” as they were, she said. “Anyone who buys them would be guilty of concealment of stolen goods,” she told journalists, adding she “would like to hope” they would be recovered “for the Louvre and for the nation”.
The four-man gang pulled up outside the world’s most visited museum at about 9.30am on 19 October in a stolen furniture removal truck fitted with an extending ladder and lift, in which two climbed to the ornate first-floor Apollo gallery.
Wearing hi-vis vests to resemble maintenance workers, they smashed an unsecured window and used disc cutters to open two display cases before descending in the bucket lift and fleeing on motorbikes driven by the other two men.
The heist lasted less than seven minutes, with the two who entered the gallery spending three minutes and 58 seconds inside. They dropped a diamond and emerald-studded crown but fled with eight richly gem-encrusted pieces.
The stolen jewels included an emerald and diamond necklace that Napoleon I gave to his second wife, Marie Louise, and a diadem set with 212 pearls and nearly 2,000 diamonds that had once belonged to the empress Eugénie, wife of Napoleon III.
Beccuau said the two suspects – both of whom were arrested last Saturday night, one at Charles de Gaulle airport outside Paris, reportedly as he was trying to catch a flight to Algeria – were believed to be the men who had entered the Apollo gallery.
Their DNA had been found on a display case and a scooter used in the getaway, the prosecutor said. She added that it was possible that the gang had numbered more than four men, but there was no indication so far it had benefited from inside help.
Beccuau said one of the suspects, an Algerian national, was aged 34, had lived in France since 2010, and was known to police for road traffic offences. The second was aged 39, born in the Paris suburb of Aubervilliers, and had convictions for burglary.
The prosecutor said 100 investigators from France’s BRB organised crime squad and a unit specialising in trafficked artworks and cultural goods were “working every day of the week, day and night, in an effort to identify the thieves and recover the jewels”.
Investigations were continuing, she said, adding that there was still “plenty of evidence to be examined”. She declined to give any details about the two suspects who remain at large.
Earlier on Wednesday, police acknowledged serious shortcomings in the Louvre’s security. The Paris police chief, Patrice Faure, told senators that ageing systems and delays to planned upgrades meant “a technological step has not been taken”.
A planned €80m (£70m) security improvement programme would not be completed before the end of the decade, Faure said. The museum’s director, Laurence des Cars, had previously acknowledged security blindspots.
Des Cars said the only external security camera installed near the Apollo gallery was pointing in the wrong direction to cover the window. The museum this week transferred some precious jewels to the Bank of France, RTL Radio reported.
