The now-infamous balcony window through which thieves entered the Louvre museum to steal priceless jewels last month had been identified for its “vulnerability” in a 2018 security audit, French daily Le Monde reported Tuesday, compounding the problems faced by managers of the world’s most-visited museum.
On October 19, a four-person gang raided the Louvre in broad daylight, taking just seven minutes to steal jewellery worth an estimated $102 million before fleeing on scooters.
The thieves parked a moving truck with a ladder below the museum's Apollo Gallery housing the French crown jewels, ascended in a bucket, broke a window and used angle grinders to cut into glass display booths containing the treasures.
The window had been flagged as “one of the establishment’s greatest vulnerabilities” in a 2018 audit carried out by the jewellery company Van Cleef & Arpels, according to Le Monde’s report.
The audit warned that the balcony window could be reached by using an extendible ladder – exactly what transpired in last month’s heist.
The museum did not immediately respond to queries about the report by Le Monde. But the newspaper said the Louvre declared it only became aware of the 2018 security evaluation after the heist.
France’s highest audit institution earlier in November said in a cutting report that the Louvre had prioritised rendering the museum more attractive, including by acquiring more artworks, at the expense of security.
The museum’s director has pledged more police and security cameras, acknowledging failings that led to the theft in an appearance before lawmakers.
Adding to its current woes, the Louvre last week announced the temporary closure of one of its galleries due to safety concerns over a ceiling.
The incident underlined the dilapidated state of some of the structures, as well as the challenges of welcoming millions of people every year in a building that mostly dates back to the Renaissance era.
Four more arrests
The report by Le Monde came hours after French authorities announced the arrest of four more people as part of ongoing investigations into the jewel heist.
"They are two men aged 38 and 39, and two women aged 31 and 40, all from the Paris region," Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau told reporters.
Four other people, including three men and a woman, have already been charged over the theft. One of those men, a 37-year-old, was in a couple with the woman and they have children together, Beccuau said earlier this month.
The couple were arrested after their DNA was found in the basket lift used during the robbery. The man's criminal record contained 11 previous convictions, most of them for theft, she said.
The first two men arrested earlier were also known to the police for having committed thefts. Both lived in the northeastern Paris suburb of Aubervilliers.
The thieves dropped a diamond- and emerald-studded crown that once belonged to Empress Eugenie, the wife of Napoleon III, as they escaped. But they made off with eight other items of jewellery including an emerald and diamond necklace that Napoleon I gave his second wife, Empress Marie-Louise.
The stolen jewels have not been recovered.
