Louvre Jewel Heist Probed for Money-Laundering Motive

French investigators are treating Sunday’s smash-and-grab at the Louvre as a potential money-laundering operation, after four masked thieves stormed the museum’s Galerie d’Apollon and escaped with eight pieces of royal jewelry.

The brazen theft, which took place shortly after the museum opened its doors on Sunday morning, was likely the work of a sophisticated criminal syndicate, which entered the upper window of the gallery via a crane and made off with diadems, brooches and necklaces tied to the Napoleonic era within a 7-minute window, authorities have said.

“Organized crime can have two objectives: either to act for the benefit of a sponsor, or to… obtain precious stones to carry out money-laundering operations,” Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau said, according to a report by the Financial Times.

Detectives are probing whether the jewels might be used to launder the proceeds of a drug-trafficking organization, Reuters reported, citing Beccuau.

“Nowadays, anything can be linked to drug trafficking, given the significant sums of money obtained from drug trafficking,” Beccuau said, according to the report.

No injuries were reported, and the Louvre shut for the day as some 60 detectives were assigned to the case. Officials called the perpetrators “professionals,” part of a pattern of sophisticated criminal syndicates increasingly targeting museums.