French court jails six Georgians over theft of rare Russian books

PARIS: A French court has sentenced six Georgian nationals to prison terms of up to seven years for stealing rare editions of Russian literary works from leading libraries in France, in a case tied to a wider series of similar thefts across Europe.

The defendants — five men and one woman — were convicted overnight from Friday to Saturday of criminal conspiracy with intent to commit an offence. Some were also found guilty over the theft of a cultural asset on display. Two of those sentenced were tried in absentia after already being arrested in Georgia, which does not extradite its citizens.

The case concerns the theft of valuable Russian classics by writers including Alexander Pushkin, Nikolai Gogol and Mikhail Lermontov. The stolen books taken across Europe were worth millions in total. French prosecutors described the operation as extensive and carefully prepared. In court submissions, the prosecutor said the theft had been "massive, organised, planned and executed with meticulousness and cynicism".

Convictions and earlier cases

Two of the accused, identified only as Mikheil Z. and Beqa T., had already been convicted and jailed in other European countries for related offences and were temporarily transferred to France for the proceedings. Mikheil Z., 50, received the longest sentence of seven years in prison. The court also barred him permanently from entering France after his release and deportation.

He had already been sentenced in Lithuania last year to three years and four months in prison for the organised theft of 19th-century publications valued at 606,000 euros, or $698,000. Beqa T., 49, was given a four-year sentence in France, in addition to the three years and six months in prison he had previously received in Estonia.

How the thefts were carried out

The crimes in France were committed in 2023 at the Diderot Library of the Ecole Normale Superieure in Lyon, as well as at the National Library of France and the University Library of Languages and Civilisations in Paris. Investigators said the group first visited libraries to inspect rare works, taking photographs and measurements, and then returned later to swap the originals with near-undetectable copies.

Between March and October 2023, Mikheil Z. went to the National Library of France 40 times to consult manuscripts, mostly by Pushkin, telling staff he was researching democracy in 19th-century Russian literature. In November that year, the library discovered that nine works had been replaced with copies, with the loss estimated at 650,000 euros.

Europe-wide investigation

The French case is part of a broader investigation into thefts that also affected libraries in Germany, Switzerland and the Czech Republic. The wave of crimes prompted the creation of a joint investigation team under the European Union’s police and judicial coordination bodies, Europol and Eurojust, which led to several arrests in 2024.

In June 2024, Russia’s Litfond auction house included in its catalogue a second edition of Pushkin’s The Prisoner of the Caucasus, corresponding to a copy stolen from the National Library of France. The auction house told French authorities it had documents showing the book had been acquired from its owner in Russia in 2014/2015.

According to investigating magistrates, the thefts may be connected to an effort to return Russian cultural heritage to Russia at a time of worsening relations between Moscow and Europe over the war in Ukraine.