Cheeky German agency cashes in on inadvertent function in £75million Louvre raid with new advert making gentle of heist
A cheeky German firm has cashed in its inadvertent role in the £75million Louvre raid with a new advert which makes light of the heist.
Boecker, a crane manufacturer based near Dortmund, boasted their goods lift, which was used in the audacious heist, was ‘quiet as a whisper’.
In a tongue-in-cheek advert, the company posted a picture of their mounted truck surrounded by police tape outside the Paris museum, captioned: ‘If you’re in a hurry. The Bocker Agilo carries your treasures up to 400 kg at 42 m/min – quiet as a whisper thanks to its 230 V electric motor.’
Alexander Boecker, CEO of Boecker, said he went ahead with the advert to prove Germans have a sense of humour ‘after all’.
‘We heard about the robbery at the Louvre on Sunday and were able to determine relatively quickly that it was our inclined lift that the perpetrators had used.
‘Once it became clear that no one had been harmed, we started getting more and more texts from employees asking, “Have you seen this? What do you think?” And then my wife and I started brainstorming a bit on Saturday.
‘And then my wife had the idea for when things need to be done quickly. So we acquired the image on Monday morning, or rather the licence for it, and said we’d post it on Instagram, Facebook and later LinkedIn, hoping that everyone would get the joke and not take the whole thing too seriously.’
He later clarified the device is ‘certainly not intended for burglaries’.
A cheeky German firm has cashed in its inadvertent role in the £75million Louvre raid with a new advert which makes light of the heist
A crane manufactured by German firm Boecker was used by the thieves in the daring robbery at the famous Paris musem
Mr Boecker said 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.’
Thieves first parked their truck with an extendable ladder below the museum’s Apollo Gallery shortly after it opened on Sunday.
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.
