Shady Russian tech billionaire offers to BUY looted French crown jewels & return them to the Louvre… but there’s a catch

A SHADY Russian tech billionaire has offered to buy the looted French jewels and return them to the Louvre – in Abu Dhabi.

Telegram founder Pavel Durov, 41, said the stolen treasures would be much better protected in the UAE as opposed to poorly guarded France.

It comes after brazen raiders plunged France’s reputation into the gutter by stealing priceless jewels from the most popular art museum in the world.

The four gang members are still at large following their daring daylight heist on Sunday morning.

Despite mounting speculation concerning who was behind the theft and how exactly they were able to pull off such a daring stunt – Durov said he wasn’t surprised by the raid.

The tech entrepreneur said: “This is another sad sign of the decline of a once-great country, where the government has perfected the art of distracting people with imaginary threats instead of facing real ones.”

He added on X: “Happy to buy the stolen jewelry and donate it back to the Louvre.

“I mean Louvre Abu Dhabi, of course; no one steals from Louvre Abu Dhabi.”

The Louvre Abu Dhabi is a major art museum in the UAE that’s partnered with France’s iconic museum of the same name in Paris.

It shows priceless artworks from around the world under a huge, futuristic dome.

Durov is the founder of Telegram messenger, which is known for its focus on privacy and encrypted messaging and boasts over a billion monthly active users worldwide.

Dubbed the Mark Zuckerberg or Elon Musk of Russia, the tech tycoon has an estimated net worth of £17billion.

He previously stated that the European Union “almost banned citizens’ right to privacy”.

Durov slammed France for attempting to push through a law requiring messaging apps to scan through users’ private messages.

He claimed that Germany intervened at the eleventh hour to prevent the law from being passed.

It comes after a crisis meeting was held at the Louvre on Monday to get to the bottom of the unprecedented theft.

The hoodlums got away with artefacts described as the country’s “crown jewels”, including an Imperial tiara containing 2,000 diamonds.

Gerald Darmanin, France’s Justice Minister, said: “We failed and presented a deplorable image of France.”

Authorities believe the stash could have been stolen to order by a black-market kingpin, and there are fears the jewels may never be recovered.

It led to the Louvre being shut for the second day in a row on Monday, as senior ministers met inside.

Darmanin conceded that windows and display cabinets were too easily broken into, and there were not enough CCTV cameras.

Security guards also failed to confront the gang, while police did not react to an alarm in time to arrest them.

A leaked report by France’s auditing watchdog – the Cours des Comptes – meanwhile revealed “consistent and persistent delays” in bringing security up to date in the world’s most visited art museum.

Durov is also a French citizen and currently lives in France, where he is under investigation.

He was arrested last year after flying from Azerbaijan to Paris with girlfriend Yulia Vavilova, 24, a gamer and crypto coach.

Authorities claimed Telegram’s lack of moderation, limited cooperation with law enforcement and features like disposable numbers and cryptocurrency make it an accomplice in drug trafficking, paedophilia and fraud.

When Durov refused to hand over data on Ukrainian protesters to Russian security agencies, he was effectively forced to give up his company and move abroad in 2014.

He said the French investigation into his affairs was “completely absurd”, adding, “Just because criminals use our messaging service among many others doesn’t make those who run it criminals.”

He said: “Telegram staff can’t see or read user messages.

“That’s why we’ve never revealed a single private message.”

Despite an annual operating budget of £280million, a third of rooms in the Louvre’s Denton Wing – where the burglary took place – had no cameras at all.

A blurry image showing one of the raiders breaking into a cabinet has emerged, but it is by no means clear enough to identify him.

There were five security guards on duty the Apollo Gallery – from where the jewels were taken – but all of them ran away after being threatened with angle-grinders and chainsaws.

Nobody was hurt during the heist, which took just seven minutes from the moment the thieves got up to the Louvre’s first floor using an extendable ladder on the back of a flatbed truck.

Laure Beccuau, the Paris prosecutor, described the criminals as a “strike team”, and said the “highly organised criminal gang” could well be working to a collector in the black market, who had ordered the pieces.

National Rally leader Jordan Bardella called the robbery “a humiliation”, while the party’s long-term presidential candidate, Marine Le Pen, spoke of “a wound to the French soul”.

There are now 60 investigators working full-time on the high-profile case, while overseas police forces have also been informed.

French President Emmanuel Macron vowed: “We will recover the works and the perpetrators will be brought to justice.”

He added: “Everything is being done, everywhere, to achieve this, under the leadership of the Paris prosecutor’s office.”

Laurent Nunez, France’s Interior Minister, said an investigation had been launched into “theft and criminal conspiracy to commit a crime” by a “highly-organised criminal gang”.

The “Banditism Repression Brigade of the Judicial Police” is leading the enquiry, along with the Central Office for Combating Trafficking in Cultural Property.

Mr Nuñez said: “We can’t prevent everything. There is great vulnerability in French museums.

“Everything is being done to ensure we find the perpetrators as quickly as possible, and I’m hopeful.”