So earlier today, a small team of thieves disguised as workmen climbed a mobile freight elevator up the side of the Louvre museum in Paris, sawed in through a window, opened two display cases, and made off with French royal jewelry worth an undisclosed sum of euros euros. In and out, seven minutes, in broad daylight. They then went out the window, climbed onto motorcycles, and vanished into the City of Light.
As the French would say, chapeau. Impressively done.
Maurice Leblanc smiles from the great beyond. That was a display of élan!
As many of us have always said: look like you’re supposed to be doing work, nobody will ask what are you doing until it’s too late.
Hat?
Is that like saying “My hat’s off to you” in English?
Unless the theft was at least as clever as this I’m not interested.
Stranger
As does Jean-Pierre Melville.
I think so. I learned it from my sister’s francophone in-laws.
Chapeau means something like ‘recognition or respect for what you have done’. To be honest, the burglars don’t deserve much respect: they conveniently entered the windows via a parked construction crane. During their escape, they lost Eugénie’s crown (wife of Napoleon III) and another piece of jewelry, both of which were damaged. It was probably a contract job. Since the pieces of jewelry are unique and well known in art circles, they are unsellable. They will probably be taken apart and melted down, and thus lost forever. Chapeau? Well, I don’t know.
So far,there hasn’t been any release of video footage or descriptions of the thieves, besides the fact that they were wearing workclothes and hi-viz jackets. (A shame, I prefer my jewel thieves to be dressed in impeccably tailored suits.) Usually nowadays, any kind of manhunt comes with at least some fuzzy camera stills indicating height, ethnicity, build, etc.
Are there not any cameras in that gallery? Is there some reason not to release any footage?
Maybe. I suspect, though, that if they had just wanted to steal gold and gems for their market value, they’d have chosen a less secure target that the Louvre, not to mention a target that would bring much less “heat”. If you want gold and diamonds, you rob a jewelry trader, you don’t steal from a place that will bring the full force of the French government down on you. That’s why I suspect the jewelry will remain intact.
Has anyone seen Omar Sy lately?
Hmm, if the jewels remain intact (the crown was damaged, as already mentioned), what does the client intend to do with them? Should an oligarch’s mistress wear them? Or should they be stored deep in a Saudi prince’s safe? Does someone want to humiliate France? Do the MAGA people want to please Trump, meaning that we will soon see Melania Trump wearing these jewels at a banquet with Macron? There are no limits to the imagination, and in today’s world, things happen that would have been considered impossible ten years ago. Let’s wait and see.
Would it be harder to ransom them back than it was to steal them in the first place?
Same thing that happens with famous paintings that are stolen, I imagine - some folks just want to be the ones that have them.
Yes, I definitely think so. The break-in was a surprise coup; no one was prepared for it. In blackmail, the critical point is the handover. The French police and government will do everything, absolutely everything, to apprehend the perpetrators during the handover.
That the Regent, Sancy and Hortensia Diamonds were not stolen may be significant. Those really would have been impossible to sell through legitimate channels, as they are so distinctive. Most of the individual stones in the pieces that were stolen are less so and thus those items could very easily be broken up.
But the ransom v. breaking-up arguments are not actually mutually exclusive. The gang could try to get a ransom in the full knowledge that, if that failed, they still have the option of dismantling them. And the French government will know that when considering any demands. That many of the items stolen in the 2019 Dresden Grünes Gewölbe robbery were recovered intact three years later means that recovery isn’t impossible.
I’m a little surprised the heist was possible. I’ve never been to the Louvre but I have seen the British Crown Jewels. The gallery in which you see those is literally inside of a big safe with an enormous door so the door could be shut at any sign of a heist. And it is (or was) in a basement level.
Ethnicity? Only in America.
Over half the galleries don’t have cameras, they have been saving on security (but spent a fortune on a glitzy ball saal for VIP meals and festivities – sounds familiar?). But the tourists have filmed them, don’t worry. There is always someone filming you today. I guess they will sell the pics to the highest bidding TV station, may take a while.
Heck, they could just return the jewels and live off the movie rights and the interview circuits. Can’t wait!
This theft, especially under those circumstances, is of course a humiliation for the French psyche and the authorities in already politically unstable times. The opposition was quick to blame it on Macron and the government.
J’en ai ras le bol! That tête de noeud Macron set the combination lock to Bastille Day again! You would have thought that he’d know better after some teens from Aschaffenburg dismantled the Eiffel Tower as a prank when austerity measures led to replacing security patrols with a Kryptonite bike lock that could be picked with a paperclip and a biro cap! Merde!
Stranger