Bild: Louvre robbers tried to sell stolen jewelry via darknet
1 November 08:09
The burglars who stole jewelry from the Louvre in Paris in October tried to sell the jewelry belonging to the museum to the Israeli security firm CGI Group through darknet.
This was reported by the German newspaper Bild, citing the head of the company Zwick Nave, "Komersant Ukrainian" reports.
“Five days after the Louvre robbery, we were contacted through the official website of the CGI Group by a person who called himself a representative of the robbers. He asked if we would negotiate on the darknet about the purchase of artworks and emphasized that we had 24 hours to respond,” Nave said.
At the same time, according to the newspaper, CGI was previously hired by an anonymous person who was closely connected to the Louvre to search for the robbers and the stolen jewelry. The company’s director said that CGI Group had agreed to the robbers’ representative’s proposal; after long negotiations and checks, it turned out that the unknown person was in possession of “at least some of the stolen items.”
“We informed the relevant authorities in Paris. Bureaucratic red tape prevented us from returning at least some of the artwork,” Naveh said.
Louvre robbery
On the morning of October 19, the Louvre in Paris was robbed. Nine jewels from the Napoleon collection were stolen.
According to the French newspaper Le Parisien, the thieves entered the building from the facade facing the Seine River, where construction work is currently underway. They used a freight elevator to gain direct access to the targeted room in the Apollo Gallery.
Two robbers, while a third stood guard, smashed the display cases in the Napoleon and French Sovereigns galleries, stealing nine items from the imperial family’s jewelry collection. Among them are a tiara worn by Queens Marie-Amelie and Hortense; an emerald necklace of Empress Marie-Louise; a tiara once owned by Empress Eugenie, etc. The latter, according to the investigation, is decorated with almost two thousand diamonds.
Investigators managed to find one of the stolen items, the crown of Empress Eugenia, as the thieves dropped it during their escape. The whereabouts of the rest of the items are unknown. The amount of damage is currently estimated at 88 million euros.
