France jails 6 Georgians over thefts of rare Russian books
What's new: Prosecutors tied the case to a wider European burglary network that hit libraries in Germany, Switzerland and the Czech Republic.
A French court sentenced six Georgian defendants to prison terms of up to seven years for stealing rare Russian literary works from major French libraries and replacing them with near-identical copies. The books, worth millions of euros across Europe, included editions by Alexander Pushkin, Nikolai Gogol and Mikhail Lermontov. The thefts in France took place in 2023 at the Diderot Library of the Ecole Normale Superieure in Lyon, the National Library of France and the University Library of Languages and Civilisations in Paris. Investigators said the group first studied, photographed and measured the books, then returned to swap them out. Europol and Eurojust helped form a joint investigation team after similar thefts struck Germany, Switzerland and the Czech Republic.