Every minute that passes is a piece of Napoleonic jewel that will never be recovered

From the moment it was known theft of the Napoleonic jewels Inside the Louvre in Paris, France began two parallel races where they sought to try to recover part of the loot. The first one didn’t last long. The next day he found out that he was not going to receive a single euro. by insurance because French law prevented it. The second, and more complicated, is a race against time, because every second that passes is a piece that may not be able to be recovered.

A global black market. I counted this week The Wall Street Journal that the assault on the Louvre has immediately activated the semi-clandestine ecosystem through which stolen art and, in particular, historical jewels circulate: an international circuit that moves billions and that connects diamond cutting workshops in Dubai or Delhi with discreet jewelers in New York, Antwerp or Tel Aviv.

The priority now is not only to recover the pieces, or those that can, but to do so before they come in on that circuit and suffer the most feared fate: being dismantled, separated from their mount and converted into anonymous gems and molten gold without a past.

Jewelry is not paintings. Unlike a Picasso or a serial watch, a stolen jewel can disassemble in minutes: the gold melts, the diamond is cut, the emeralds are rearranged and historical traceability disappears. Although they lose their premium for Napoleonic symbolic value, they retain their value as raw material.

The situation reinforces the incentive: the ounce of gold exceeds $4,000 after go up 60% in one year, detonating a wave of metal thefts throughout Europe. And unlike pictorial art, ancient gems lack microengravings or universal databases that allow them to be blocked from being released to the market: once split and relocated, they disappear.

The method. The media counted this week that the coup combined speed and daring, but left a trail unbecoming of a professional command: the assailants used a moving elevator to access through an upper window, burst display cases with radials and fled on scooters… leaving abandoned the elevator itselfthe tools, part of the costume (work vests) and even an imperial crown from the 19th century with 1,400 diamonds and 56 emeralds.

For former specialized agents, this distances the Pink Panthers profile (disciplined groups that leave no trace) and suggests a bold but technically weak team, capable of entering, but not maximizing value or minimizing exposure.

What will the thieves do now? For the Journalif the museum does not pay a reward or admit negotiation, the only viable commercial path is cutting and atomization: re-cut large diamonds into smaller sizes to erase the mark, separate secondary stones easily absorbed by the gray trade and melt the gold to sell it as metal.

The experts remember that a receiving network remains up to 90% of value: the thief usually receives only 10% of the legal market (the “price of silence” that is distributed among those who participate in the risk, the conversion and the shielding of concealment), but even so the black reward can be higher than that of a stolen painting, the trace of which jumps to public bases.

The crux. The incentive persists because the penalties are low compared to profit and because the stolen jewel, once decomposed, leaves few traces to incriminate. Experts they propose to reclassify the looting of heritage as cultural terrorism (harnessing penalties and sending a regulatory signal).

Plus: it forces museums to raise standards physical and procedural, from the control of systems such as cranes or external platforms to, as a deterrent idea, verifying the identity of visitors elevated to sensitive parts, although this clashes with the tourist experience and the flow of masses. The Louvre remained closed after the robbery, remembering that beyond the property loss there is an immediate reputational and operational cost.

It only works in the shade. Everything in the jewel crime revolves around at speed: the faster they pass into the hands of cutters and smelters, the more irreversible the evidentiary damage is and the more liquid the exit to the black market. Delay, on the other hand, increases the logistical risk, multiplies leaks within the criminal chain, opens cracks for denunciations and devalues ​​the loot before it produces income.

That is why the decisive race is not so much between thieves and insurers, but between stopwatches: the clock that marks how long it takes the receivers to volatilize the identity of the pieces compared to the one that measures how long it takes the State to close the perimeter and cut escape routes.

The only window. If you want, the Louvre robbery embodies the Achilles heel of historical jewels: they allow a high-profile crime with a low profile outlet because their cultural identity is destructible at the will of the gangsters and its material value remains. The paradox is that an imperial loot can end up becoming in minor gems sewn into the lining of a jacket heading to an unknown jeweler before the police complete the first sweep.

Thus, the only real window to rescue the assets is not in the trial, but in the very brief interval between the blow and the cuttingand once that threshold is crossed, what is stolen ceases to exist as part of history to survive only as matter.

Image | Benh LIEU SONG

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