Thefts of Rare Pushkin Editions in France: Thieves Face up to Seven Years in Jail
The haul remains missing as investigators say the thieves used nearly undetectable facsimiles and targeted rare 19th-century Russian literary volumes.
- On Saturday, a Paris court sentenced six Georgian nationals to terms ranging from 18 months suspended imprisonment to seven years in jail for stealing 19th-century Russian literary classics from prestigious libraries.
- Prosecutors described the scheme as a "massive, organised operation, planned and carried out with meticulous care and cynicism," where thieves photographed rare works and swapped them for undetectable facsimiles before returning them to shelves.
- The National Library of France estimated its loss at €770,000 euros, with stolen items including Alexander Pushkin's 1825 first edition of "Boris Godunov" and texts by Mikhail Lermontov and Nikolai Gogol.
- Mikheil Z., 50, received the harshest seven-year sentence with permanent French territorial ban, while Beqa T., 49, was sentenced to four years in addition to a previous three-and-a-half-year term imposed in Estonia.
- Although none of the stolen works have been recovered, Alexandre de Konn, lawyer for the BnF, said the institution "has not lost hope" of finding them despite the ongoing investigation across Europe.
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From Pushkin to Gogol: They went to libraries all over Europe, took measures of valuable editions of literary classics and later replaced them with forgeries. Now the verdict was against six Georgians.
In France, six Georgian nationals were sentenced in Paris on the night of Friday 12 to Saturday 13 June for the theft of rare works by Russian authors, including those of poet and novelist Alexandre Pushkin. The sentences range from 18 months in prison with a suspended sentence to seven years in prison.
Six Georgian citizens were imprisoned for stealing Russian volumes from libraries from hundreds of thousands of euros, never found again
Inestimable Russian works have been methodically replaced by copies by a bold ploy in prestigious French libraries. Among the authors, the 19th-century poet and novelist, Alexandre Pushkin.
The most recent episode in the story of an international plot to steal more than 170 rare Russian literary works from several important libraries in Europe is currently taking place in a Paris courthouse. Most robberies have...
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