Louvre heist: 'We've recovered millions worth of artworks thanks to tipsters', explains legal expert

[00:00:00]Staying in the French capital, the Apollo Gallery at the Louvre Museum, where French crown jewels worth 88 million euros was stolen in a dramatic heist, has reopened to the public today.

[00:00:12]In a scene worthy of a Hollywood blockbuster, thieves disguised as construction workers broke into the gallery in October 2025. They stole eight jewels, which to this day remain missing. However, no jewels will now be displayed in the room. It will revert to its previous function as a state gallery.

[00:00:35]>> I'm happy that we're meeting here in the reopened Apollo Gallery, which had been closed since the 19th of October 2025.

[00:00:43]This iconic Louvre location will no longer be used to display royal jewelry or gems, which will now be presented in a secure location elsewhere in the museum.

[00:00:59]>> Security needs to be bolstered like that of our museums and our national collections across the nation, which are not exempt from criminal and malicious activity. It is now a national-level plan getting underway in the coming weeks. The security is not an end in itself, and it is not a way of limiting access to these works, but the opposite.

[00:01:17]It is a condition of access to them.

[00:01:21]>> And joining me now from London is Christopher Marinello, an international art recovery specialist. So, Christopher, thank you very much for your time. Nine months after that extraordinary heist, the gallery at the Louvre has reopened today, but those eight jewels are still missing.

[00:01:41]>> That's right. Visitors are going to see a very different Apollo Gallery. They are going to be focusing on the beauty of the room itself, the ceilings, the artwork around it, but they are not going to find any jewelry there.

[00:01:53]>> So, where does the investigation currently stand?

[00:01:58]>> Well, the police did a very good job in arresting four criminals, but they have not been very persuasive in convincing the criminals that they arrested to um divulge the location of the jewelry.

[00:02:13]They are now claiming the criminals are claiming that there was some type of a Mr. Big that hired them to do the job, yet they won't name who this Mr. Big is.

[00:02:26]>> Why are stolen artworks so incredibly difficult to recover?

[00:02:34]>> Well, you know, artwork is small enough that it can travel. Paintings that have been taken off the wall can be rolled up and put into a tube. They can be mailed.

[00:02:43]They can be taken by automobile across borders. Jewelry, even more so, is very small.

[00:02:50]You know, stones such as this can be broken up and resold and and cannot be identified as the ones that were stolen.

[00:02:58]And and precious metals can be melted down. So, it's very attractive to criminals, especially because our museums and cultural institutions seem to have a serious security problem.

[00:03:09]>> And in terms of you know, what criminals stand to gain, I mean, the the the worth of these jewelry is extraordinary, isn't it?

[00:03:20]>> That's right. There's a lot of money, a lot of things to gain here. And you know, unfortunately law enforcement is underfunded, understaffed, and not prepared to recover our cultural heritage when it's stolen in this fashion. I mean, just look since the Louvre theft, we thought this was going to be the end all, be all. There's already been another major theft at the Lalique Museum in in in France. So, you know, what have we learned from the Louvre incident? Not very much.

[00:03:49]>> So, how do specialists trace such pieces? I mean, how difficult is it?

[00:03:56]>> Well, what we do is we monitor the markets.

[00:04:00]You know, if the items were ever to be offered for sale in major auction houses or online, or you know, we're also contacted by tipsters. In fact, just this morning somebody has contacted me about the Louvre jewelry saying that he knows where they are and he's waiting for a reward to be offered before he releases information.

[00:04:22]>> Was that a reliable source?

[00:04:26]>> One never knows. I asked for proof of life, which is the term we use to to say we want to see photographs or something that shows that you have access to the jewelry. But, you know, I think a reward would be, you know, certainly apropos at this point in time since, you know, 9 months have passed and there hasn't been a single sighting of the jewelry since.

[00:04:47]>> So, do you think this person who was claiming that he knows the whereabouts of this jewel, these jewels rather, is actually legitimate? That he indeed perhaps could lead people to where these jewels are?

[00:05:01]>> In my business, one never knows. We get countless reports, crazy ideas, and and things that just don't pan out. But, you never know. And we have recovered millions of worth of artworks thanks to tipsters like this who come forward and say, "Look, we know who I know who did the job. I know where they're located. I may have seen them."

[00:05:23]You know, criminals are not always perfect. And as we could see with this Louvre theft, the the mistakes that were made. So, it is quite possible that someone knows where they are. And we would like some sort of incentive to encourage people like this to come forward and and tell the police what they know.

[00:05:41]>> I want to come back to what you were saying earlier about, you know, the fact that already there's been another massive heist between what happened in October and now. And so the question really is is what lessons does the Louvre and other major art galleries learn from this robbery?

[00:06:01]>> If they could get into the Louvre, they can get in anywhere. So the message here is that our museums and our cultural institutions are not safe. And governments have difficulty now allocating money to the arts because they're tied up with post-COVID situations, immigration crisis. There's two wars going on in the world right now of of major importance.

[00:06:25]And there just isn't money to to to to for security for our museums and for law enforcement. So you know we need to start thinking differently. Perhaps it is if this is a very unpopular idea, but perhaps it's time to allow some museums to deaccession some of the artworks that are in the basement that no one is looking at. You know, how many portraits of of Louis the you know, Louis do you need?

[00:06:53]Maybe they could be sold and and gone into a fund for security or using technology to put tracking devices on everything in the museum. We need to do something different because it's happening every couple of months.

[00:07:06]There's another theft from a major museum and we find that these things are lost forever.

[00:07:13]>> Christopher Marinello, thank you so much for your time.

[00:07:18]And that's it for this edition. Do you stay with us here on France 24.