Nearly 170 rare books by Russian classics stolen in Europe — newspaper

LONDON, October 8. /TASS/. Around 170 books by Russian authors were stolen in Europe in 2022-2023, causing $3.3 million in damages, The Guardian reported. According to the newspaper, the books were stolen from libraries in Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Finland, France, the Czech Republic, Switzerland, and Estonia. The thieves mainly stole works by Alexander Pushkin (1799-1837). In December 2022, Latvian law enforcement officials identified a suspect using DNA analysis. The suspect was revealed to be Beqa Tsirekidze, a Georgian citizen. Tools for restoring books and library cards from Vienna, Vilnius, Kiev, Munich, and Paris were seized from him. According to The Guardian, Tsirekidze had previously been convicted of theft and had experience working in the antiques trade. He refused to say whether he acted alone or as part of a criminal group and refused to name the customers or organizers of the crime. In 2023, two more suspects were detained in Poland. In 2024, an international investigation team was set up under the auspices of Eurojust, comprising investigators from Lithuania, Poland, France, Switzerland, and Georgia. Law enforcement officers discovered that Tsirekidze had stolen more than ten books by Pushkin in Tallinn, some of which date back to the nineteenth century. According to the newspaper, he simply did not return them. In other cases, such as in Riga, thieves had to remove the magnetic strips from the books. In Poland, antique books were not marked with a magnetic strip, so the alarm did not go off when they were taken out of the library. By February 2025, five individuals had been convicted of stealing works by Russian authors in eight European Union countries.