Last month's spectacular Louvre heist, in which robbers made off with some of France's crown jewels, was a "deafening wake-up call" for museum security, the head of France's highest audit institution said Thursday.
Upgrades to security at the world-renowned museum have been moving at a "woefully inadequate pace", Pierre Moscovici told a press conference to present the audit court's report on the Paris museum.
Instead, the museum has prioritized "high-profile and attractive operations" at the expense of security, the Court of Auditors said in its sharply critical report.
A four-member gang raided the Louvre, the world's most-visited art museum, in broad daylight on October 19, taking just seven minutes to steal jewelry worth an estimated $102 million before fleeing on scooters.
The thieves parked a truck with an extendable ladder below the museum's Apollo Gallery housing the French crown jewels, clambered up, broke a window and used angle grinders to cut into glass display cases containing the treasures.
Authorities have so far not recovered the stolen jewels. But four people -- three of whom are suspected of being directly involved in the heist -- have been charged and detained.
The Court of Auditors' report examined the museum's management between 2018 and 2024.
It concluded that management made investment decisions "at the expense of the maintenance and renovation of buildings and technical facilities, particularly those related to safety and security."
It also highlighted "a persistent delay in the deployment of security equipment for the protection of the artworks" which the museum "failed" to address during the period under review.
The Louvre's management said on Thursday it accepted "most" of the audit body's recommendations while maintaining that the report failed to recognize some of its actions on security.
The recommendations made by the Court echo the initial findings of an administrative inquiry following the theft.
Unveiled last week by Culture Minister Rachida Dati, those findings highlighted a "chronic, structural underestimation of the risk of intrusion and theft" by the museum and "an inadequate level of security measures".
The minister also asked the museum to review its governance and create "a new security and safety department at the presidential level".
A Louvre board meeting is scheduled for an emergency session on Friday.
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.
With AFP
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