Paris.- Security agents from the Louvre or the Police could have prevented the escape of the thieves who assaulted the Parisian museum on October 19th for a period of only about 30 seconds, according to the conclusions of the administrative investigation launched as a result of the event.
"For about 30 seconds, Securitas agents or the agents on board the car (police) could have prevented the robbers' escape," said this Wednesday Noël Corbin, head of the General Inspection of Cultural Affairs, when appearing before the French Senate's Culture Committee to explain the details of that investigation, which was concluded and presented on November 5th.
Corbin nuanced that it's easier to say it 'a posteriori', but that those "30 precious seconds" could have been achieved if the alert had been given earlier - something that was impossible due to the inadequacy of the security equipment - or if the gallery's glass that was assaulted had resisted a little longer to the thieves' struggle.
This failure is due to a "chain of fragilities," said Corbin, which have been affecting the functioning of the Louvre for years, both due to the age of its facilities and the chronic underestimation of the risks of theft and the lack of coordination.
Regarding the inadequacy of the security equipment, the investigation points, as the Minister of Culture, Rachida Dati, and the president of the Louvre, Laurence des Cars, had already acknowledged in previous statements before the French legislators, to the number of outdoor cameras, which is considered "very insufficient".
In the robbery area, he specified that only one was in operation and, despite its mediocre quality, it allowed to see the preparations for the assault.
However, the Louvre's security system does not have a central station where all security cameras can be viewed simultaneously due to a lack of screens, so the images of the thieves initiating their operation, which lasted only between 7 and 8 minutes, were not seen live.
To that was added a "failure of the mechanical devices" of security, since the resistance time of the window of the affected sector, the Apollo Gallery, was "extremely weak", according to Corbin.
There was also a lack of good "alert coordination" and the police did not receive sufficiently detailed instructions on the direction the thieves had taken, so the officers initially headed in the opposite direction, towards the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel area.
The rapid intervention of the museum security agents and the police did, however, prevent the thieves from burning the clues to their escape, as they had planned.
It's something that has been key to the arrest, in the following weeks, of the four alleged perpetrators of the robbery, as well as some of their alleged accomplices, although the loot, eight French Crown jewels of incalculable patrimonial value, has not been recovered.
Missing Security Audits
The
investigation also reveals a significant delay in the implementation of a new general security plan for what is the most visited museum in the world (with almost 9 million annual visitors), as it began after an audit in 2017, but in 2021, after the change of presidency of the Louvre, the designed strategy was judged not ambitious enough and had to be widely revised.
The lack of that plan, however, did not exempt from making security improvements, but from 2022 and, above all, in 2023 and 2024, investments in this area were greatly reduced, according to the investigation.
Another problem highlighted during the hearing in the Senate was the dysfunctional transmission of key documents within the institution, specifically in the handover of functions in 2021 between the previous management team, led by Jean-Luc Martinez, and the current one, headed by Des Cars.
Specifically, the lack of a proper filing system prevented important security reports from reaching current officials, such as an audit conducted in 2019 by the jewelry firm Van Cleef & Arpels that precisely identified the risk posed by the balcony overlooking the Seine used as an entry point in the robbery.
Those responsible for the administrative investigation have been extremely surprised by the museum's malfunction, but they stressed that there has been no "bad faith" on the part of any of the parties, but rather a chain of dysfunctions that progressively led to a situation of catastrophe.
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