Four days after the surprising robbery, it is still not known who the thieves are who took the Louvre Museum eight jewels of the French crown of incalculable value, nor how they could circumvent all the security measures of this icon of Paris. While the French authorities and those responsible for the art gallery have sung the mea culpa for the glaring error, a video that came to light this Thursday shows how the thieves fled from the museum with loot in hand.
In the images, broadcast by the French network BFMTV, two of the four thieves are seen go down the moving elevator that they used to access the balcony of the Apollo roomjust before getting on the motorcycles and fleeing. The two people who appear in the video hide part of their face, one of them with a motorcycle helmet and the other with a balaclava and a yellow vest.
The president of Louvre Museum, broke his silence this Wednesday before the Senate. “This drama has deeply shocked the Louvre guards, but also France. (…) Despite our efforts and our work, we have failed,” Des Cars began his appearance in front of the Culture Commission of the Upper House, where he answered their questions about what is already considered the .
Des Cars claimed to have “assumed all his responsibilities” since the robbery and regretted that “his name has been thrown to the wolves,” since he has been warning for years of the museum structural and security problems. In front of the senators, the official described in detail what those events were like. “7 minutes” in which four individuals entered the Louvre Museum through a side balcony of the façade adjacent to the Seine River, until they exited through the same place with the nine napoleonic jewelshelped by a stolen forklift.
During that time, the security guards were only able to activate the alarms, notify the headquarters by radio and evacuate the building. three minutes later, Dozens of French National Police officers ran through the museum’s corridors in search of the thieves, but it was too late. The security company agents went out after the command, achieving that, at least according to those responsible, They couldn’t set fire to the truck to erase evidence. During that escape, the thieves lost one of the most valuable jewels: the crown of empress eugeniawhich was recovered, although with significant damage.
