France Makes New Arrests in Louvre Heist; Jewels Still Not Found

Five more people have been arrested in the Louvre heist case, the Paris prosecutor said Thursday, after two alleged members of the group that stole jewels from the museum were charged.

Authorities linked one of the new individuals detained to DNA found at the museum, Laure Beccuau told RTL radio. The necklaces, tiaras and earrings that were stolen still haven’t been found, she added.

“It’s one of the suspects that we had our eyes on,” Beccuau said on Thursday. The arrests were made in Paris and the surrounding area, she added.

The two men who were arrested last weekend have been charged for theft by an organized gang and criminal conspiracy and remain in jail, the prosecutor’s office said in a statement.

At a press conference on Wednesday, Beccuau described the stages of the theft, and some of the techniques used to find the suspects, including getting DNA samples from a scooter used in the getaway for one and from a broken window and objects dropped as they fled the scene for another.

She declined, however to go into detail on avenues police were exploring to get back the jewels themselves. “I want to remain hopeful that it will be found and returned to the Louvre Museum and, more broadly, to the nation,” she said on Wednesday.

Politicians, French police and Louvre’s security staff have been criticized for not stopping the heist. The lax outdoors surveillance, that allowed a furniture hoist to park up outside the museum unnoticed, could have made it a more attractive target than the closely-guarded jewelry stores at the Place Vendome.

Beccuau on Thursday noted the hypotheses that the jewels could be used in money laundering operations or in deals with organized crime groups, adding that the only sure thing was that they couldn’t be sold on the legal market.

The two men charged have “partially admitted their involvement” in the crime, the prosecutor said Wednesday. One, 34, was arrested at Charles de Gaulle airport with a one-way ticket to Algeria while the other, 39, was halted near his home in Aubervilliers, a suburb of Paris.

Video surveillance confirmed that at least four people participated in the theft on site and the investigation found that the hoist they used to get into the Louvre had been stolen on Oct 10.

Beccuau said on Wednesday that there was no indication at this point that the group had worked with people within the museum.

Photograph: Police officers outside the Louvre Museum in Paris, France, on Monday, Oct. 27, 2025. Photo credit: Nathan Laine/Bloomberg

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