Laurence des Cars has offered to resign as the director of the Louvre, accepting the daylight raid – in which jewels worth an estimated £76m were stolen – was a ‘terrible failure’
The director of the Louvre has offered to resign after admitting the weekend’s raid was a “terrible failure” with a key camera in the gallery incorrectly positioned.
Questions are continuing to mount over how thieves pulled off a brazen heist on Sunday morning, making off with jewels worth a staggering £76million in a seven-minute heist. Experts have warned that chances of recovering the valuables snatched from the French capital are already all-but over.
Robbers scaled the side of the Apollo, the world’s most-visited gallery, before climbing through a window. The quick-acting criminals were able to lift items that had once belonged to French royalty and colonial leaders after strolling into the iconic museum and smashing glass containers, using power tools.
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The theft was only able to happen due to a series of major security failings, and the incident caused a national outrage. Now, the under-pressure boss of the iconic museum has offered to go. Laurence des Cars told a committee of the French Senate that a camera monitoring the area where the suspects broke in was pointing in completely the wrong direction.
“Despite our efforts, despite our hard work on a daily basis, we failed,” she said. “We are experiencing a terrible failure at the Louvre, which I take my share of responsibility in. We did not detect the thieves’ arrival early enough. The warnings I had been sounding came horribly true last Sunday – we did not detect the thieves’ arrival early enough.”
French culture minister Rachida Dati has told the National Assembly that an administrative inquiry had been launched alongside the police investigation to ensure full transparency, but offered no explanation on how the thieves pulled off the raid. “The Louvre museum’s security apparatus did not fail, that is a fact,” he stressed on Tuesday. “The Louvre museum’s security apparatus worked.”
Interior minister Laurent Nunez said on Monday that the museum’s alarm was triggered when the window of the Apollo Gallery was forced open. Police arrived two or three minutes after a witness called, he told LCI television. Nunez gave no details about the surveillance cameras that may have recorded the thieves, pending the ongoing police investigation.
The masked thieves were able to gain access to one of the best-protected buildings in the world, and in the immediate aftermath an expert explained that if authorities don’t locate the precious jewels within 48 hours, they will likely never be found. A team of 60 investigators continue working on the theory that an organised crime group was behind it – but one specialist fears it’s now probably already too late.
Speaking hours after the heist, Chris Marinello, the chief executive of Art Recovery International, said it was always a race against time. He told the BBC on Sunday afternoon: “Police know that in the next 24 or 48 hours, if these thieves are not caught, those pieces are probably long gone. They may catch the criminals, but they won’t recover the jewels.”
The only item recovered so far is an emerald-set imperial crown that once belonged to Napoleon III’s wife, Empress Eugenie, which the masked gang dropped outside the museum as they fled. The crown, covered in more than 1,000 diamonds and said to be worth tens of millions, was found damaged.
All the suspects were dressed as workers, with helmets and hi-vis yellow vests, and they targeted a wing of the Louvre by the Seine River, where construction work was ongoing. Mr Nuñez added: “We can’t prevent everything. There is great vulnerability in French museums. Everything is being done to ensure we find the perpetrators as quickly as possible, and I’m hopeful.” He said CCTV footage was being studied, and “it’s not impossible that the perpetrators are foreigners.”
“The gang was experienced and had obviously been watching the site before the operation,” he shared. One of the mopeds used by the criminals was later found abandoned in a nearby street. Rachida Dati, France’s Culture Minister, said: “I am on site alongside the museum staff and the police.”