The French culture minister said that the security system in the Louvre museum was operating as it should when burglars broke into the Apollo Gallery and took off with several historic pieces.
There had been questions whether security cameras had failed, The Associated Press reported.
“If you target the Louvre, the most important museum in the world, and then get away with the French crown jewels, something was wrong with security,” Arthur Brand told Reuters.
But Culture Minister Rachida Dati told the National Assembly, “The Louvre museum’s security apparatus did not fail, that is a fact. The Louvre museum’s security apparatus worked,” the AP reported.
Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez said that the museum’s alarm went off when the gallery’s window was broken.
Within three minutes, police were on the scene with the heist taking less than eight minutes, four of which were in the museum, the AP reported.
The Apollo Gallery held the Crown Diamonds. Several items were taken: a sapphire diadem, a necklace and earring, an emerald necklace and a pair of earrings, a reliquary brooch, a corsage-bow brooch and a diadem that belonged to Empress Eugénie.
The value of the jewels taken was $102 million, but does not include the historic value, the AP reported.
Dati has launched an administrative inquiry into the incident. A police investigation is also ongoing.
There have been more cases of gangs stealing valuable jewels and gold from museums in Europe — at least four museums in France have been robbed in the past two months — and while the thieves are typically caught, the invaluable artefacts are not, Reuters reported.
“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,” Marc Balcells, an expert in crimes against cultural heritage, told Reuters. “But when I am stealing ... jewelry, I can move it through an illicit market as precious stones.”
“My cynical belief is that these gems from the Louvre have most likely already been broken down for their parts,” art crime historian and professor, Laura Evans, told CNN.
“I don’t think that thieves probably care about the historical, cultural, or emotional significance of these gems as they were, and would not blink at cutting them down into different shapes and sizes. There’s a high liquidity when those gems are dismantled, but a stolen Monet, for example, has a really low liquidity, because it’s instantly recognizable,” she explained.
“If you have jewels or gold in your collections, you need to be worried,” Christopher Marinella, Art Recovery International, told Reuters.
Dati called the robbery “a wound for all of us” since the “Louvre is far more than the world’s largest museum. It’s a showcase for our French culture and our shared patrimony.”