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French police may nab Louvre thieves but are unlikely to recover their loot

Published: 21 Oct. 2025, 16:42

French police officers stand in front of the Louvre Museum in Paris on Oct. 19. Robbers broke into the Louvre and fled with jewelry on the same morning. [AFP/YONHAP]

Crime gangs around Europe are robbing valuable jewels and gold from cash-needy museums like the Louvre. And while law enforcement often ends up catching the thieves, they struggle to recover the priceless goods, police and art experts say.

Only a small pool of criminals would be capable of such a job as Sunday's audacious robbery in Paris, and the police may already know their identities, specialists say. But the stolen objects can be quickly broken down into parts and sold.

“If I steal a Van Gogh, it's a Van Gogh. I can't dispose of it through any other channel than an illicit art market,” said Marc Balcells, a Barcelona-based expert in crimes against cultural heritage. “But when I steal [...] jewelry, I can move it through an illicit market as precious stones.”

The brazen heist of crown jewels from the Louvre, the world's most visited museum, has been decried by some as a national humiliation and sparked security checks across France's myriad cultural sites.

“If you target the Louvre, the most important museum in the world, and then get away with the French crown jewels, something is wrong with security,” said art investigator Arthur Brand.

“It's one of the biggest manhunts in French history.”

Officials at the Louvre, home to artworks such as the Mona Lisa, had, in fact, already sounded the alarm about a lack of investment.

And at least four French museums have been robbed in the last two months, including the Natural History Museum in Paris, according to media reports.

People gather outside of the closed Louvre Museum in Paris on Oct. 19. Robbers broke into the Louvre and fled with jewelry that morning. [AFP/YONHAP]

Christopher Marinello, the founder of Art Recovery International, which tracks stolen art, said such museum heists are on the rise across Europe and further afield.

He cited cases in the Netherlands, France and Egypt.

“If you have jewels or gold in your collections, you need to be worried,” Marinello said.

Paris prosecutors have entrusted the investigation to a specialized Paris police unit known as the BRB, which deals with high profile robberies.

Former police officer Pascal Szkudlara, who served in the unit, said the BRB handled the 2016 Kim Kardashian probe, when Paris thieves stole the Kardashian's $4 million engagement ring, as well as a recent string of kidnappings of wealthy crypto bosses.

He said the BRB has about 100 agents, with over a dozen specialized in museum thefts. Investigators will look at video footage, telephone records and forensic evidence, and informants will also be activated.

“They can have teams working on it 24/7 and for a long period,” Szkudlara said, expressing “100 percent” confidence the thieves would be caught.

Police will be poring over security footage going back weeks to identify suspicious people casing the joint, Brand said.

Corinne Chartrelle, a police officer who previously worked at the French Police's Central Office for cultural property trafficking, said the jewels could feasibly end up in a global diamond center like Antwerp, where there "are probably people who aren't too concerned about the origin of the items."

The diamonds can also be cut into smaller stones and the gold melted down, leaving buyers unaware of their provenance.

Tourists take photos with their mobile phone of the Louvre pyramid courtyard in Paris on Oct. 20 after the announcement that the museum will remain closed for a second day, following thieves stealing priceless jewels from the museum a day earlier. [AFP/YONHAP]

If the thieves feel like the net is closing in, they could throw out or destroy the goods altogether.

Police are clearly in a race against time.

“Once they've been cut into smaller jewels, the deed is done. It's over. We'll never see these pieces again intact,” said Marinello. “A very small percentage of stolen artworks is recovered. When it comes to jewelry, that percentage is even less.”

Any theory about the objects being delivered to a mysterious buyer was laughable, said Brand. “That's unheard of,” he said. “You only see it in Hollywood movies.”

Cultural authorities across Europe will be looking at how to better secure museums in a time of tight public finances.

Brand said it was impossible to properly safeguard museums, so the best thing is to slow down the time it takes for people to steal objects and escape — giving police longer to respond — by making windows thicker or adding more doors.

“[Robbers] know they have only five, six minutes to get away because after six minutes, the police show up. So if they go into a museum [ …] and they find out that it takes more than six, seven, eight minutes, they will not do it,” he said.

Finland's National Gallery Director General Kimmo Leva said financial realities mean tough decisions.

“A tightening everyday economy is, naturally, not the best basis for making the investments needed to mitigate potential threats,” Leva said.

Reuters