Gold worth 600,000 euros stolen in Paris museum heist

PARIS (AFP): Thieves have broken into Paris’s Natural History Museum, making off with gold samples worth 600,000 euros ($700,000) in the latest of a worrying series of robberies from cultural institutions, according to the museum.

Famed for its dinosaur skeletons and stuffed animals, the National Natural History Museum in the chic 5th district of the French capital also houses a geology and mineralogy gallery.

A break-in was detected on Tuesday morning, with the intruders reportedly using an angle grinder and a blow torch to force their way into the river-side complex that is popular with Parisians and tourists.

“The theft concerns several specimens of native gold from the national collections held by the museum,” the museum’s press office told AFP late on Tuesday.

“While the stolen specimens are valued at around 600,000 euros based on the price of raw gold, they nevertheless carry an immeasurable heritage value,” it added.

Native gold is a metal alloy containing gold and silver in their natural, unrefined form.

An unnamed police source told the Parisien newspaper that the museum’s alarm and surveillance systems had been disabled by a cyber attack in July, with the thieves seemingly aware of the vulnerability.

“This incident comes at a critical time for cultural institutions and museums in particular. Several public collections have indeed been targeted by thefts in recent months,” the museum added.

It did not elaborate on the other robberies, but the Adrien Dubouche National Museum in Limoges in central France is known to have suffered a break-in earlier this month.

Thieves stole two dishes and a vase in Chinese porcelain classed as national treasures, with the losses estimated at 6.5 million euros.

Last November, four men with axes and baseball bats smashed the display cases in broad daylight at the Cognacq-Jay museum in Paris, making off with several 18th-century works.

The next day, jewellery valued at several million euros was stolen during an armed robbery at a museum in Saone-et-Loire in central France.