The prosecutor's office announced the arrest of five people in connection with the theft of volumes from the University Library in Warsaw. An international investigative team was established. It is known that one of the detained people has already been charged.
Szymon Banna, spokesman for the Warsaw district prosecutor's office, announced that in the Polish investigation decisions were made to charge five suspects with participation in an organized criminal group and participation in thefts from the University of Warsaw Library.
He said that procedural steps have already been taken to announce charges against one of them in Lithuania (the suspect is in pre-trial detention in Vilnius). – Procedural activities are planned to be carried out with respect to the others in connection with their detention in Georgia – he added.
The theft of old prints from BUW began in December 2022. The thieves stole dozens of books and replaced them with dummies.
– During the investigation, it was found that a criminal group, also operating abroad, is suspected of committing similar thefts from university libraries in Europe. The stolen works include works by significant Russian authors such as Alexander Pushkin, Ivan Krylov, Nikolai Gogol and Mikhail Lermontov. The value of the stolen works on the antique market was estimated at over PLN 3.8 million, noted prosecutor Banna.
An international investigative team was established
As part of international cooperation, an international investigative team was established to coordinate activities.
– The Polish side, in cooperation with the Georgian authorities, carried out a series of actions, including detaining suspects, searching and securing stolen works – said the spokesman.
– During recent operations in Georgia, several stolen old prints and other evidence materials were seized. Procedures are also underway to secure the suspects' property, he added.
He noted that additional Open Source Intelligence activities (so-called white intelligence – a form of intelligence gathering information from publicly available sources) were undertaken to collect information on the activities of the Russian auction house, which could have been a place for selling stolen old prints.
A woman and a man borrowed books
Investigation into the theft of volumes from the University of Warsaw Library was initiated on November 2, 2023. The prosecutor's office then informed that the theft of books took place on October 16, 2023 in the BUW reading room at ul. Dobra 6 in Warsaw.
– A woman and a man borrowed the books and did not return them in their entirety. Only two of the ten ordered works and their fascicles (parts of the work in the form of pages) remained, said Prosecutor Banna at the time.
Rector of the University of Warsaw prof. Alojzy Z. Nowak, in a statement issued a day after the start of the investigation, said that the theft of valuable items from the resources of the University of Warsaw Library probably lasted from December 2022 to October 16, 2023, although it could have started even earlier. The BUW confirmed the presence of a person suspected of theft in Latvian libraries.
Main photo source: Artur Węgrzynowicz, tvnwarszawa.pl