This special report covers the audacious daylight heist at the Louvre Museum in Paris, where thieves stole priceless items from the French crown jewels collection. Key figures discussing the implications include art recovery expert Christopher Marinello and France's Minister of Justice, Gérald Darmanin. Art recovery expert Christopher Marinello warns, 'we'll never see these pieces again intact'. The brazen robbery, executed in just seven minutes by four individuals using a crane and power tools, has been labelled a 'national embarrassment' by the French minister. While a manhunt is underway, the focus shifts to the fate of the historic jewels, which experts believe will be broken up and their gems recut and sold. The incident has also sparked fears of copycat crimes at smaller museums worldwide.
00:01Remember the 2003 Da Vinci Code? Well, that seems to have become a reality in 2025.
00:07The Louvre Museum in Paris is still closed while police investigate a brazen heist which targeted France's priceless crown jewels.
00:17Now thieves wielding power tools broke into the world's most visited museum and in broad daylight, that is,
00:25before escaping on scooters with eight extremely valuable items of jewellery.
00:31A manhunt is currently underway in France for the four people who staged an audacious daylight robbery at the Louvre Museum.
00:38But what are the thieves likely to do with the stolen jewellery? That remains to be a question. Here's a report, take a look.
00:46It's the heist of the century, according to French newspapers on Monday,
00:50after four thieves stole priceless jewellery in broad daylight at the Louvre Museum in Paris.
00:55Right now, it's a race between the police and their investigators.
00:59So what are the thieves likely to do with the stolen jewellery?
01:02Christophe Marinello is the founder of Art Recovery International.
01:05There's no way they can just submit these things to Suggies or Christie's, and they need to break them up.
01:12And what they're going to do to hide them is open up the jewels and take out the diamonds and the sapphires
01:19and the emeralds and take them over to a place where they can have them recut in Antwerp or in Tel Aviv
01:26and find a jeweler that won't ask any questions.
01:29And once they're been cut into smaller jewels, the deed is done. It's over.
01:36Well, we'll never see these pieces again intact.
01:39The robbery, which took between six and seven minutes, has prompted France to re-evaluate the security of its cultural sites.
01:46The thieves used a crane to break into the Louvre, stealing priceless objects from an area that houses the French crown jewels before fleeing on motorbikes.
01:56Oh, it was a very well-planned theft, absolutely.
01:59I mean, the only clue that they left was, that should have raised a red flag,
02:04was that the workers were working on the museum on a Sunday in Paris.
02:09Nobody works on Sunday in Paris at 9 a.m.
02:12France's Justice Minister, Gérard Darmanin, criticized the ease with which the robbers executed the heist,
02:19calling it a national embarrassment.
02:21Despite confidence that the robbers will be caught, the incident has drawn criticism.
02:26And smaller museums around the world fear copycats.
02:29Here is Dutch art crime investigator Arthur Braun.
02:33If the Louvre can be robbed, how can we protect ourselves, you know?
02:38And they are afraid that local thieves will think, well, you know, they took it off with the Louvre, let's try our local museum.
02:46So that's the biggest fear now in the museum world.
02:50Meanwhile, the museum, which had been expected to reopen on Monday, remained closed.
02:56Clever, to use a cherry picker and a glass cutter to steal priceless, well, sentimentally priceless jewels from the Louvre.
03:06The fact that it was done in daylight is also astounding.
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