Berlin (AFP) — The German company that made the furniture hoist used in the Louvre heist has been taking advantage of the scandal to promote the device, posting tongue-in-cheek adverts about the quality of its equipment.
Boecker, a lifting equipment maker based near Dortmund, posted a picture of the mounted truck outside the Paris museum on social media with the caption: “When you need to get going again quickly.”
The device, called the Agilo, can transport up to 400 kilograms with an engine that is “as quiet as a whisper”, the post said.
Alexander Boecke, managing director of the company, told AFP the machine was sold “a few years ago to a French customer who rents this type of equipment in Paris and the surrounding area”.
Similar pieces of equipment are a common sight around Paris, where elevators are small or absent in most apartment buildings.
The alleged jewel thieves had arranged to have the vehicle demonstrated to them last week and had stolen it during the demonstration, he said.
“They removed the customer’s labelling and replaced the license plates,” Boecker said.
Watching news reports about the heist on Sunday, Boecker, 42, and his wife quickly recognized the furniture hoist as being one of theirs.
“When it became clear that no one had been injured in the robbery, we took it with a touch of humour” and “started thinking about how we could perhaps use this”, he said.
“It was, of course, an opportunity for us to use the most famous and most visited museum in the world to get a little attention for our company,” he said.
“The crime is, of course, absolutely reprehensible, that’s completely clear to us.”
In Sunday’s heist, thieves parked the truck with an extendable ladder below the museum’s Apollo Gallery shortly after it opened.
They then climbed up the ladder in broad daylight before using cutting equipment to get through a window and open display cases to steal the jewellery.
They made off with eight priceless pieces, including an emerald-and-diamond necklace that Napoleon I gave his wife Empress Marie-Louise and a diadem that once belonged to the Empress Eugenie, which is dotted with nearly 2,000 diamonds.
The entire operation took just seven minutes.
