3 days ago
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The thieves who stole crown jewels from the Louvre in October evaded police with just 30 seconds to spare due to avoidable security failures at the Paris museum, a damning investigation has revealed.
The investigation, ordered by the culture ministry after the embarrassing daylight heist, revealed that only one of two security cameras was working near the site where the intruders broke in on the morning of Sunday 19 October.
Agents in the security control room did not have enough screens to follow the images in real-time, while a lack of coordination meant police were initially sent to the wrong place once the alarm was raised, said the report, details of which were announced at the French senate’s culture commission.
“It highlights an overall failure of the museum, as well as its supervisory authority, to address security issues,” the head of the commission, Laurent Lafon, said at the start of a hearing on Wednesday.
One of the most startling revelations was that the thieves had only 30 seconds to spare before police and private security guards arrived on the scene.
“Give or take 30 seconds, the Securitas [private security] guards or the police officers in a car could have prevented the thieves from escaping,” the head of the investigation, Noël Corbin, told senators.
He said measures such as a modern CCTV system, more resistant glass or better internal coordination could have prevented the loss of the jewels, worth an estimated €88m (£77m) and which have still not been found.
Major security vulnerabilities were highlighted in several studies seen by management of the Louvre over the last decade, including a 2019 audit by experts at the jewellery company Van Cleef & Arpels. Their findings stressed that the riverside balcony targeted by the thieves was a weak point and could be easily reached with an extendable ladder – exactly what transpired in the heist.
Corbin confirmed that the Louvre director, Laurence des Cars, had not been aware of the audit, which was ordered by her predecessor Jean-Luc Martinez. “The recommendations were not acted on and they would have enabled us to avoid this robbery,” Corbin said, adding that there had been a lack of coordination between the two government-appointed administrators.
Police believe they have arrested all four intruders, who escaped on motorbikes having carried out the heist in the Apollo Gallery in about 10 minutes in total, according to the investigation.
The revelations are likely to pile more pressure on Des Cars, the first woman in the role, who was appointed by Emmanuel Macron in 2021. Questions have swirled since the break-in over whether it was avoidable and why the world’s most-visited museum appeared to be so poorly protected.
France’s lower house of parliament is carrying out its own inquiry, while Des Cars and Martinez are due to be questioned by senators next week. Last month, France’s state auditor said security upgrades had been carried out at a “woefully inadequate pace” and the museum had prioritised “high-profile and attractive operations” instead of protecting itself.
Guy Tubiana, a senior police officer and security adviser at the culture ministry who took part in the investigation, told senators he was “stunned” by what he had discovered at the museum. “There was a succession of malfunctions that led to catastrophe but I never would have thought the Louvre could have so many malfunctions,” he said.
Staff at the Louvre are expected to go on strike on Monday to demand management act against what they see as understaffing and overcrowding at the museum, which welcomed 8.7 million people last year.
At the weekend, the museum revealed that a water leak had damaged 300 to 400 journals, books and documents in the Egyptian department in late November.
