Louvre president resigns as jewellery heist inquiry reveals ‘systemic failures’

Laurence des Cars steps down days after parliamentary inquiry called Paris museum a ‘state within a state’

The president of the Louvre in Paris has resigned, four months after a gang of thieves broke into the museum’s Apollo gallery and made off with €88m (£76m) of Napoleonic jewellery in France’s most dramatic heist in decades.

Laurence des Cars, who had offered to step down in the immediate aftermath of the burglary, tendered her resignation to Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday in what the French president called “an act of responsibility”, the Elysée Palace said.