Louvre, who could be behind the coup of the century? «All tracks open». The Pink Panthers hypothesis, bandits from the East

FROM OUR CORRESPONDENT
PARIS – The more hours pass, the more the chances of finding the stolen goods and the perpetrators of the robbery diminish, despite President Macron’s promise. Around sixty investigators from the anti-crime brigade of the Paris judicial police and the Central Office for the fight against trafficking in cultural goods are mobilised. Ma the disconcerting ease with which the gang of four bandits were able to escape with the jewels, aboard two scooters, on Sunday morning, makes the hunt an almost hopeless undertaking.

The Israeli intelligence firm Cgi Group, based in Tel Aviv, said it had been contacted by the Louvre to participate in the investigation — «taking into account the success in solving the one billion euro theft case in Dresden in 2019» —, but the museum management quickly and flatly denied it.

Who could be behind the coup of the century? “All hypotheses remain open,” says the Paris prosecutor, Laure Beccuau. «The robbery could have been commissioned by a collector, in which case we would have some hope of recovering the pieces in good condition, or carried out by thieves interested only in jewels and precious metals, perhaps useful for laundering the proceeds of criminal activities.

Everything can be linked to drug trafficking, given the large sums of money involved”, adds the prosecutor, who does not rule out “foreign interference” even if it is not the favored hypothesis. The Louvre remained closed for another day yesterday, after Sunday, to allow investigators to continue their investigations and also to question employees, in case the gang had an internal accomplice.

Some witnesses heard the bandits talking in a foreign language, and this fuels the rumors – unconfirmed, but suggestive – of the involvement of the infamous “Pink panthers”, the gang of “pink panthers” originally from the former Yugoslavia, former soldiers and paramilitaries, mostly from Serbia and Montenegro, which has been raging in Europe since the 1990s, and which received its name from Interpol after a robbery in 2003 in London, when a diamond was hidden in a jar of cream as in one of the films in the series that began with the misadventures of Inspector Clouseau.

The Pink Panthers’ blows are characterized by great rapidity, little or no direct violence, targets so prestigious as to be considered unassailable. Just like the Louvre. The jewelry is often dismantled and distributed abroad. The Pink Panthers gang, considered a huge criminal network, made up of hundreds of affiliates, is suspected of having carried out dozens of robberies including, in France, the two robberies at the American jewelery Harry Winston on Avenue Montaigne in Paris (in 2007, loot of 36 million dollars, and in 2008, 73 million), at the Hotel Carlton in Cannes in 2013 (53 million dollars) and at the Chaumet jewelery shop near the Champs Élysées in June 2021 (two million euros). Jewels never found.

The Diario Politico newsletter

If you want to stay updated on political news, subscribe to the newsletter “Political Diary”. It is dedicated to Corriere della Sera subscribers and arrives twice a week at 12. Just click here.