Broken alarm aids €100m art thief

PARIS city council has admitted that a robber managed to make off with €100m of prized art from a museum because a broken burglar alarm had not been fixed.

The break-in has prompted questions to be asked about museum security in the capital, coming less than a year after another multi-million-euro art theft.

Police were called to the Musée d'Art Moderne in the 16th arrondissement yesterday when security guards noticed a broken window and five missing works, including a Picasso and a Matisse.

The thief broke in through a window in the middle of the night and picked up the paintings without anyone noticing.

Paris city council confirmed yesterday that the security system at the museum had not been working since March 30.

A museum source told Le Parisien that the fault had been reported to management at the time, to no avail. "It's hard to understand why nothing was done for two months," the source said.

CCTV cameras in the museum recorded the robber's every movement - but none of three surveillance staff responsible for monitoring the footage overnight noticed anything abnormal until the following morning.

Paris mayor Bertrand Delanoë said he was "saddened and shocked by this theft, which is an intolerable attack on Paris's cultural heritage".

Photos of the five stolen paintings have been sent to Interpol. Art experts and police say it will be very difficult for the thief to profit from his crime because the masterpieces are so well-known.

This latest incident is reported to be the biggest theft from a French museum since 1976, when 118 Picasso works were stolen from the Palais des Papes in Avignon.

Last June, a collection of sketches valued at between €3m and €8m was stolen from the Picasso museum while it was closed for renovation work.