Two suspects have been arrested over the theft of French crown jewels from the Louvre on October 19, French authorities said.
Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau said in a statement on Sunday that authorities made the arrests on Saturday evening. One man was reportedly detained while preparing to board a flight to Algeria at Charles de Gaulle Airport. The arrest was took place around 10 p.m. local time, according to the French newspaper Le Parisien, which first reported the news.
Authorities described the two suspects as both in their 30s and from the Seine-Saint-Denis area of Paris. On Friday, investigators said they were focusing on a newly surfaced video allegedly showing two thieves, one clad in a yellow vest and another in all black, escaping the Louvre with $102 worth of Napoleonic jewelry using a furniture lift.
Nine artifacts were taken from the Louvre’s Apollo Gallery, however the thieves dropped one artifact, a crown, in their haste. The remainder of the loot has yet to be recovered by authorities. President Emmanuel Macron’s government revealed last week that the eight stolen jewels were not privately insured. According to the French culture ministry, the country would not be reimbursed for any losses linked to the stolen items if they are not recovered by the police.
The 36-second clip captured the pair descending from a window in the museum’s Apollo Gallery before fleeing the area on scooters. The heist took place in broad daylight and during museum operating hours, all within seven minutes.
The heist has plunged the Louvre and the Macron administration into a publicity crisis. Though museum director Laurence des Cars said the alarms functioned properly at the time of the heist, the lack of camera footage in the gallery or eyewitnesses has led to heavy scrutiny of the Louvre’s security system. Des Cars called the theft a “terrible failure” of the security system at the Paris museum while speaking to the French Senate, adding that the staff “did not detect the arrival of the thieves soon enough.” She said that she had submitted her resignation to Culture Minister Rachida Dati, however Dati did not accept the offer.
Louvre staff had previously accused museum leadership of postponing security upgrades amid a staff shortage, and an audit of the Louvre leaked after the heist called the security “outdated.”
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