Six Georgian nationals, five men and a woman, have been sentenced to up to seven years in prison by a French court over stealing rare editions of 19th-century Russian literary classics from French libraries, French media reported on June 13.
The stolen books, worth millions in total, included works by Alexander Pushkin, Nikolai Gogol, and Mikhail Lermontov, France24 said, noting that the trial marks the latest effort in seeking justice in a series of similar heists from European libraries “suspected to be the work of an organised network with potential links to Russia.”
Mikheil Z., 50, received seven years in jail along with a permanent ban from French soil upon release and deportation. He had already been sentenced the previous year in Lithuania to three years and four months in prison “for the organised theft of 19th-century publications valued at 606,000 euros ($698,000),” the outlet said. Another defendant, Beqa T., 49, received a four-year sentence, “on top of the three years and six months in prison he had already been handed in Estonia.”
The two “have been temporarily handed over to France,” while two others were sentenced in absentia, “as they had already been arrested in their native Georgia, which does not extradite its citizens.”
(In 2024, Georgian prosecutors reported arresting four people for organizing the theft of rare books from European libraries, as part of the joint efforts of the Georgian, Lithuanian, French, and Swiss law enforcement agencies within an investigative team created with the support of Eurojust.)
The Theft Scheme
The crimes in France reportedly took place in 2023 at three libraries: the Diderot Library of the École Normale Supérieure (ENS) in Lyon, and both the National Library of France (BnF) and the University Library of Languages and Civilisations (BULAC) in Paris.
Similar crimes also struck Germany, Switzerland, and the Czech Republic, eventually spurring “the creation of a joint investigation team under the European Union police and justice coordination agencies Europol and Eurojust that led to several arrests in 2024.”
According to France24, investigators found that the thieves first visited the French libraries to examine rare and valuable works, photographing and measuring them, before returning later to replace them with “virtually undetectable copies.”
Between March and October 2023, Mikheil Z. visited the BnF 40 times, requesting access primarily to Pushkin manuscripts while claiming to be researching democracy in 19th-century Russian literature. “In November, the library realised nine works had been replaced with copies, with an estimated loss of 650,000 euros.”
France24 reported that in June 2024, Russia’s Litfond auction house listed a second edition of Pushkin’s The Prisoner of the Caucasus that matched a copy stolen from the National Library of France. The auction house reportedly told French authorities it possessed documentation “proving the book was acquired from its owner in Russia in 2014/2015.”
According to the outlet, investigating magistrates suggested the thefts “may be linked to a desire to repatriate Russia’s cultural heritage at a time when Moscow’s relations with Europe have been increasingly strained over the Russian invasion of Ukraine.”
Despite the convictions, none of the stolen works has been recovered yet.
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