A French court has sentenced six Georgian citizens to up to 7 years in prison for stealing rare editions of Russian classics, including Alexander Pushkin, the Monde newspaper reported.
Previously, French prosecutors had requested up to 8 years in prison for the criminals. They were accused of stealing rare books, including first copies and manuscripts of works by 19th-century Russian classics, including Pushkin and Mikhail Lermontov. Prosecutors believed that these individuals were behind the 2023 robberies of the National Library of France in Paris and the Diderot Library in Lyon.
“Six Georgian citizens were sentenced in France to terms ranging from eighteen months suspended to seven years in prison for stealing works by several Russian writers from prestigious libraries in Paris and Lyon“, the newspaper reported.
All the defendants, five men and one woman, were found guilty of conspiracy to commit a crime, and some of them were also found guilty of theft of cultural property, the article said.
Miheil Zamtaradze received the maximum sentence of seven years and was banned from entering France after serving his sentence. It is noted that he was previously sentenced to three years and four months in prison in Lithuania for stealing books worth over 600,000 euros.
Another defendant, Beka Tsirekidze, was sentenced to four years in prison, Monde reports. He had previously received a sentence of three and a half years in prison in Estonia.
Two other defendants were tried in absentia because they are serving their sentences in Georgia, which does not extradite its citizens. They were sentenced to five years in prison in their homeland and received six years in prison in France. Arrest warrants were also issued for them, the article states.
According to the prosecutor's office, these individuals may have acted in two separate groups as part of a larger criminal organization operating in several European countries. In particular, similar cases of theft of rare books have been registered in Germany, Latvia, Poland, Switzerland and Belgium, according to Ouest-France.