Editor’s Note
This article is based on a 2018 security audit report for the Louvre, as reported by *Le Monde*. It reveals that the balcony used in a recent high-profile robbery had been previously identified as a critical point of vulnerability.
A 2018 security audit conducted for the Louvre by experts from the jewelry house Van Cleef & Arpels identified the balcony from which the spectacular October 19th robbery was perpetrated as
, according to revelations by *Le Monde*.
The audit, commissioned by the then Louvre president Jean-Luc Martínez, includes two pages and three diagrams concerning the balcony of the Apollo Gallery, where the eight stolen jewels from the collection of Napoleon and the Empress were exhibited. The report shows the balcony on the Seine facade marked with
.
The Van Cleef & Arpels report even raised the possibility that
like those used in removals to access the balcony. The experts also warned that the surveillance cameras on the facade did not fully cover “the point of vulnerability.”
The document revealed by *Le Monde* has fueled suspicions that
. Three men and one woman have been detained as alleged members of the four-person commando that carried out the robbery; among them is Abdoulaye N., a former security guard at the Pompidou Center, known on social networks as *Doudou Cross Bitume* or the “legend” of motocross.
According to *Le Monde*, the Parisian court investigating the robbery has not had access to the Van Cleef & Arpels report until now, which could open a new line of investigation into the authorship of the robbery, initially attributed to an organized crime gang and later considered the work of
.
The Louvre Museum has specified that the current president, Laurence des Cars, learned of the audit’s existence only after the October 19th robbery, when she requested all documents related to the Apollo Gallery from the last 25 years.
a museum spokesperson stated.
Facing criticism also expressed in a recent audit by the Court of Accounts, Des Cars argues that in the months following her appointment she alerted about “the museum’s vulnerabilities” and “the state of advanced degradation of the museum and its equipment,” which motivated the launch of the
announced earlier this year by Emmanuel Macron, with investments of one billion euros.
