During the Europol operation in Latvia and Georgia, four Georgian citizens were arrested, accused of stealing rare 19th-century Russian books mainly from libraries in Eastern Europe, the Organization for Police Cooperation of the European Union – Europol reported on Thursday, April 25 from The Hague.
The criminal group is believed to be responsible for the theft of at least 170 books, causing damage to the affected states amounting to approximately €2.5 million.
In May, the Vilnius University Library discovered that seventeen rare Russian books, including works Alexandra Pushkina And Nikolai Gogoldisappeared, with most of them being replaced by fakes.
Similar thefts have been reported in two other Baltic countries, Estonia and Latvia, and recently in Poland, at a university library in Warsaw. In both cases, the target was Russian classical literature. Thieves also raided book depositories in Switzerland, Germany and France.
According to Europol, the criminals posed as researchers and tried to gain access to literary rarities in libraries. Valuable books were allegedly carefully studied and photographed by them. They later returned the supposed originals, replacing them with high-quality copies. In other cases, criminals used much harsher methods and simply broke into libraries.
According to Europol, some of the stolen artifacts were sold through auction houses in St. Petersburg and Moscow, making them virtually unrecoverable.
On the day of the operation, more than 100 law enforcement officers were deployed in Georgia and Latvia, and a total of 27 locations were searched. In addition to the arrest of four suspects, law enforcement officers at the scene seized more than 150 books to determine their origin.
The four suspects face prison sentences ranging from 6 to 10 years.
Tags: Georgian citizens arrested stealing valuable antique Russian books European Union
