Louvre robbery would have been foiled if police had been alerted 30 seconds earlier: Report
PARIS and LONDON -- Nobody was monitoring the live feed.
As masked men hacked a hole in a window at the Louvre Museum in Paris in October, a security camera inside the targeted Apollo Gallery was picking up the spot where they were working, Noel Corbin, the head of France’s inspectorate general of culture, told the country's Senate at a hearing on Wednesday.
As men clambered into the world-famous museum, nobody was actively monitoring that specific feed, legislators were told. And, even as the robbers collected their loot -- allegedly stealing French crown jewels worth some $102 million -- the security staff at a bank of screens weren't yet focused on the camera catching the robbery, Corbin said.
The camera's zoom wasn't "activated" until 9:38 a.m. Oct. 19, about four minutes after the robbery began, the Senate was told. By then, the blink-and-you-miss-it robbery was all but over.
Corbin told the lawmakers that had police gotten to the crime scene 30 seconds earlier, they might have stopped the robbers from escaping. The security watchdog added that a quicker viewing of the live feed from the internal security camera might have made the difference.
Authorities have previously said a security camera on the perimeter of the Louvre was not pointed in the direction of the Apollo Gallery, thus failing to captured the heist in progress.
The Senate was told on Wednesday that there had been "insufficient screens" in the security guard's control room to simultaneously view images from all the cameras in the museum.
While the live video feed from one the Apollo Gallery appeared to have been transmitted during the robbery, it wasn't immediately clear why it wasn't among those being monitored remotely by a live person. Another camera near the scene wasn't working that day, Corbin said.
The latest details on apparent faults in security at the world's most-visited museum came as the French government and law enforcement sought through a sprawling investigation to understand how those alleged lapses in procedure and equipment may have worked in favor of the robbers.
The robbery suspects fled on motorbikes, police said at the time of the heist. At least eight people have since been arrested, five of whom have been formally charged in connection to the heist, French officials said.
But the irreplaceable jewels taken during the broad daylight heist have not yet been recovered.
The Senate on Wednesday heard new details on what appeared to have happened during the heist, including that there had been "insufficient screens." That lack of screens had been highlighted in a security audit carried out earlier in the year, one of five such audits that had been carried out in the last decade, the watchdog said.
One of those audits, the one carried out in 2019 by a private auditor, had specifically focused on the Apollo Gallery, the watchdog said, adding that another in 2015 had focused on the museum's computer systems.
The Senate was told that the findings of those audits included details about security cameras, some of which were described as "obsolete." It was not immediately clear if the camera faced at the window in the Apollo Gallery was characterized as such.
As the robbery unfolded, the Senate heard on Wednesday that members of a private Securitas security team arrived outside the museum quickly enough that they may have stopped the robbers from lighting their vehicle -- a moving ladder -- on fire, thus apparently saving crucial evidence that's led to arrests.
The Paris public prosecutor, Laure Beccau, has said investigators have not given up on recovering the jewels, which include diamond and pearl tiaras, emerald and sapphire necklaces, and other items from a collection of Emperor Napoleon and his wives.
"We are examining all aspects of the parallel market," Beccau said in an interview earlier last month with Franceinfo radio.
