At the time of the brazen heist of $102 million in jewels from the Louvre last month, the password to the world-famous museum’s video surveillance system was simply “Louvre,” according to a museum employee with knowledge of the system.
The revelation comes as the museum’s security measures have come under scrutiny in the wake of the high-profile theft.
During testimony before a French Senate committee last month, Laurence des Cars, the president and director of the Louvre, said the only camera installed outside the Apollo Gallery was facing west and did not cover the window where the thieves used power tools to break in and exit.
In addition, Des Cars said all of the museum’s alarms worked, as did its video cameras, but noted a “weakness” in the museum’s perimeter security “due to underinvestment.”
French investigators said the entire robbery from start to getaway took seven minutes and that the thieves used a truck-mounted mechanical cherry picker to exit the targeted Apollo Gallery.
The Louvre director told French lawmakers, “The security system, as installed in the Apollo Gallery, worked perfectly. The question that arises is how to adapt this system to a new type of attack and modus operandi that we could not have foreseen.”
Despite touting the security system within the Louvre as working properly, des Cars added, “Today we are witnessing a terrible failure at the Louvre. The security of the Louvre is one of my top priorities during my term of office, and I repeat that I was appalled by the museum’s security situation when I arrived in 2021.”
As the investigation into the October heist continues, authorities have still not recovered the missing jewels from the museum, even though four suspects have been charged in connection with the robbery.
In a Franceinfo radio interview Sunday, Paris public prosecutor Laure Beccuau said that authorities are still searching for the missing jewels.
“All avenues are being explored,” Beccuau said.
She added the four arrests have “led to new searches and the seizure of new objects that are being examined,” and “at least one person” involved in the robbery remains at large.
Beccuau said the suspects in custody appear to not be associated with organized crime, as the first two suspects arrested were a taxi driver, 39, and a delivery man and garbage collector, 34, from the northern Parisian suburbs.
Their DNA was recovered at the scene of the crime, and they “partially admitted their involvement” in the robbery, according to Beccuau. The unemployed garbage collector was arrested at Paris’ Charles de Gaulle Airport, as he was about to board a one-way flight to Algeria, according to officials.
The other two charged suspects are a man, 37, and his domestic partner, 38, also from the northern regions of Paris.
The Apollo Gallery in the Louvre that housed the stolen jewels has remained closed since the theft, according to the museum’s website.
ABC News’ Aicha El Hammar Castano and Bill Hutchinson contributed to this report.
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