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PARIS: The Paris prosecutor said Tuesday that crown jewels stolen in a dramatic weekend Louvre heist were worth an estimated 88 million euros ($102 million), but that the monetary estimate doesn’t include their historical value to France.

Prosecutor Laure Beccuau, whose office is leading the investigation, said about 100 investigators are now involved in the police hunt for the suspects and gems after Sunday’s theft from the world’s most-visited museum.

“The wrongdoers who took these gems won’t earn 88 million euros if they had the very bad idea of disassembling these jewels,″ she said in an interview with broadcaster RTL. ″We can perhaps hope that they’ll think about this and won’t destroy these jewels without rhyme or reason.″

Also Tuesday, France's culture minister said that the security apparatus installed at the Louvre worked properly during the theft.

Questions have arisen about the Louvre security — and whether security cameras might have failed — after thieves rode a basket lift up the Louvre’s facade, forced a window, smashed display cases and fled with priceless Napoleonic jewels on Sunday morning.

“The Louvre museum’s security apparatus did not fail, that is a fact," the minister, Rachida Dati, told lawmakers in the National Assembly. "The Louvre museum’s security apparatus worked.”

Dati said she launched an administrative inquiry that comes in addition to a police investigation to ensure full transparency into what happened. She did not offer any details about how the thieves managed to carry out their heist given that the cameras were working.

But she described it as a painful blow for the nation.

The robbery was “a wound for all of us," she said. "Why? Because the Louvre is far more than the world’s largest museum. It’s a showcase for our French culture and our shared patrimony.”

Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez said Monday that the museum's alarm was triggered when the window of the Apollo Gallery was forced.

Police officers arrived on site two or three minutes after they were called by an individual that witnessed the scene, he said on LCI television.

Officials said the heist lasted less than eight minutes in total, including less than four minutes inside the Louvre.

Nuñez did not disclose details about video surveillance cameras that may have filmed the thieves around and in the museum pending a police investigation.

“There are cameras all around the Louvre,” he said.

Sunday’s theft focused on the gilded Apollo Gallery, where the Crown Diamonds are displayed. Alarms brought Louvre agents to the room, forcing the intruders to bolt, but the robbery was already over.

Eight objects were taken, according to officials: a sapphire diadem, necklace and single earring from a matching set linked to 19th-century French queens Marie-Amélie and Hortense; an emerald necklace and earrings from the matching set of Empress Marie-Louise, Napoleon Bonaparte’s second wife; a reliquary brooch; and Empress Eugénie’s diadem and her large corsage-bow brooch, a prized 19th-century imperial ensemble.

LONDON: A UK Ministry of Defense data breach that jeopardized the security of thousands of Afghans was dealt with via “a few unrecorded meetings and a handshake,” an MP has said.
Kit Malthouse described the handling of the incident — which saw the details of Afghans who worked with British forces made available online, prompting a massive evacuation program amid fears that those named in the leak could be targeted by the Taliban — as “alarming.”
The breach, containing 33,000 lines of data, and the subsequent evacuation only became public knowledge two years later after a superinjunction imposed by the government was lifted by a court.
The UK Information Commissioner’s Office, which was made aware of the breach, chose not to launch an investigation at the time.
It has now emerged that the ICO also failed to keep any notes about the decision not to investigate, claiming that this was due to the case involving classified information.
John Edwards, the UK information commissioner, told the science, innovation and technology committee of the House of Commons on Tuesday that the ICO had relied on the “honesty” of the MoD when choosing not to investigate.
Malthouse, a member of the committee, responded: “What you’ve broadly said to us is that it was dealt with a few unrecorded meetings and a handshake. ‘See ya,’ nothing to see here.
“It seems extraordinary to me given the severity and the impact of it ... The picture you’ve painted of the way the ICO handled it seems alarming.”
MP Lauren Sullivan told Edwards: “It sounds like your method of investigation relies a lot on the honesty of the person you’re investigating.”
Edwards replied: “We didn’t investigate. Yes we were relying on honesty. Had we later found we were misled, we could’ve investigated.”
MP Chi Onwurah, the committee chair, said: “When I saw some of the details of the Ministry of Defense data breach, I was astounded that that could be part of government data practice — (a) 33,000-line Excel file, with top-secret information, bandied about like confetti. This is not an individual failure ... It was an institutional failing.”
Edwards said the ICO, which launched an investigation into a smaller MoD breach involving 245 Afghans, lacked sufficient trained staff to deal with issues concerning top-secret information, but added that it was irrelevant as the regulator did not launch an investigation in this case.
“We’re able to investigate top-secret matters. We chose not to because it would’ve tied up resources which would’ve been better used elsewhere,” he said. “We were confident that the ministry was taking it seriously.”