Rare books also stolen from Swiss libraries
Published: Thursday, Apr 25th 2024, 11:50
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The European police authority Europol, in cooperation with other police forces, stopped four suspected thieves of antique and rare books in Georgia and Latvia on Wednesday. The gang stole at least 170 books from various libraries in Europe. Books were also stolen in Switzerland.
Europol estimates the value of the stolen goods at around 2.5 million euros (around 2.4 million Swiss francs), as the police authority announced on Thursday. Some of the stolen artifacts were sold at auctions in St. Petersburg and Moscow. These are now practically uncatchable.
During the arrests on Wednesday, 150 books were seized. Europol and its partners had already stopped five suspects in various countries, according to a press release. A total of nine people were stopped. The federal police authority Fedpol was part of the investigation team.
Bande replaced books with copies
In 2022 and 2023, the gang stole books from libraries in the Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Switzerland. The thieves targeted rare and mostly Russian books. For example, first editions by authors Alexander Pushkin and Nikolai Gogol were stolen.
In some cases, the thieves posed as academics in the libraries in order to get hold of the books, according to the report. In a first step, they photographed and measured the books in order to make copies. During a second visit, they replaced the original books with the copies. According to the experts, these were of "excellent quality".
In other cases, the crooks broke into the libraries and helped themselves. They had first visited the buildings as preparation. Due to the repetitive nature of the thefts, Europol was able to establish a connection between the various cases and set up a cross-national investigation network.
©Keystone/SDA
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