The priceless jewels thieves stole from the Louvre museum in a brazen heist this week were not privately insured, the French Ministry of Culture said in a statement to the daily newspaper Le Parisien.
French law prohibits entities like the Louvre from insuring its property, except when part of a collection is moved or loaned to another institution, Romain Déchelette, president of France-based Serex Assurances, a fine art insurer, told CBS News.
Because the Louvre is a national museum, its collections are considered state property for which the state alone bears responsibility, according to Déchelette. The French Ministry of Culture did not immediately return a request for comment.
“Everything that belongs to state museums in France is uninsured, unless it leaves the museum,” Déchelette told CBS News.
Déchelette added that if any of the stolen crown jewels had left the museum for another exhibit, the price of insurance would have been calculated based on an estimated value.
“There is necessarily a value in the government accounts, and an estimate would be assigned with commissions and experts,” he explained.
Charlie Horrell, head of fine art at insurance broker Marsh, told CBS News that private insurance would cover the cost of any losses that were to occur during transit.
“It’s generally somebody dropping a painting, and we’d cover the repair and restoration cost of that painting, plus the depreciation of that piece,” he told CBS News.
In the case of the Louvre robbery, were the pieces to be insured privately, “there’s no question that if cover were in place, that claim would be paid out without issue,” he said.
The French law does not apply to collections housed in private museums, like the Foundation Louis Vuitton in Paris. “In that case it’s different, and they buy insurance,” Déchelette said.
“The state is its own insurer as long as the works belonging to national museums remain in their usual place of storage,” a spokesperson for the Ministry of Culture said in a statement to Le Parisien.
As a result, neither the museum nor the government will receive any private insurance payments to cover the value of the stolen objects, according to Déchelette.
While French authorities are likely to locate the robbery suspects, they may not ever recover the stolen national treasures, a criminologist told CBS News.
“We will catch them,” Alain Bauer, a professor of criminology at France’s National Conservatory of Arts and Crafts, told CBS News. “I don’t think we will capture the jewels.”
While the missing French crown jewels are widely considered to be priceless based on their historical value, they could be broken up into pieces, with the gems sold for millions on the black market, experts have told CBS News.
The heist raises concerns about the national museum’s security vulnerabilities. According to a recent security audit, 35% of the rooms in the Denon Wing, where the stolen jewels are displayed, are not monitored by security cameras, Radio France reported.
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