PARIS, January 13. /TASS/. Investigators probing into last October’s Louvre heist have discovered the garage where the intruders brought the jewelry immediately after the crime, but did not find any of the stolen items there, Le Parisien reported.

Two men on scooters entered the underground garage of a private house in the Aubervilliers commune near Paris on October 19 – their movements were recorded by surveillance cameras. Footage shows the men putting jewelry away, before which they admired it and passed it to each other. However, as the newspaper notes, some of the items didn't show up on camera.

The suspects subsequently visited the garage several days in a row, including with an electromagnetic radiation detector, fearing possible surveillance. On the night of October 22-23, after discovering surveillance cameras in the garage, the suspects hid their faces and left the garage in a white Citroen light commercial vehicle. On October 23 and 25, one of the suspects returned to pick up their scooters and possessions from the garage, after which the trail of the jewels goes cold.

At this stage, investigators do not rule out that the robbers could have acted on their own initiative, rather than as part of some sophisticated international scheme, which "could be very damaging for France's image," the newspaper writes. However, earlier Le Parisien wrote citing sources that during interrogation after being detained one of the suspects confessed that two men "who spoke with a Slavic accent" offered him 15,000 euros to commit the theft. At the time of the crime, the suspect, as he claimed, did not know that he was robbing the most famous museum in France, but thought that he was entering "a certain building where there should be no visitors on Sunday."

BFMTV reported that in the commune of Courneuve police found a cache where the robbery suspects stored equipment, including equipment for detecting tracking beacons and jamming radio communications. In this hiding place, equipped in a bicycle storage box, they also found assay stones and flasks designed to check the quality of gold.

The Louvre Robbery

On October 19, four criminals entered the Louvre using a hydraulic lift. After opening the windows in the Apollo Gallery, they stole nine pieces of jewelry, one of which, the crown of Empress Eugenie, wife of Napoleon III, encrusted with 1,354 diamonds, was dropped during their escape. The value of the stolen jewelry is estimated at 88 million euros. Paris Prosecutor Laure Beccuau admitted that the job could have been ordered by foreign actors. More than 100 investigators are working on this heist, but no trace of the stolen merchandise has yet been found.

On October 25, two suspects were detained, one of them while trying to fly to Algeria. According to Beccuau, during interrogation they "partially admitted" their involvement in the robbery. Several more arrests were made in November, and all four alleged direct participants are currently in custody. According to preliminary data, none of them are experienced robbers and "are not associated with the top of the criminal hierarchy."