After the book thieves are brought to justice, VU hopes to recover the missing publications

On Thursday, the law enforcement authorities announced a week-long international operation during which, among other things, they dutifully arrested four citizens of Sarkartvel, allegedly for the valuable XIX century. Russian classic books are stolen from libraries in various parts of Europe.

The group allegedly stole 170 books worth about 2.5 million from libraries in Lithuania, France, Germany, Poland, Latvia, Estonia and Ukraine. euro About 150 publications were found during the raid, and they will be checked to determine if they match those stolen from the library.

From the information provided, we can see that a lot of books have been found, we hope to collect as many as we have lost, Raimundas Balinaitis, VU chancellor, told BNS. According to him, while the pre-trial investigation is ongoing, VU ​​does not have any more information, is waiting for it and is ready to cooperate.

it is alleged that the members of the organized criminal group arrested in Sakartvele in 2023 In May, 17 books of great historical and cultural importance, worth about 440,000 EUR, were stolen from the Ret skaitini reading room and Profesori reading room of the VU library.

According to R. Balinai, although VU strengthened the security of the reading room after the theft, it was probably not considered to take the necessary measures to arrest him before the incident. According to him, the data show that the crime was carried out very professionally, it took a long time and a lot of resources were allocated to it.

We don’t think we made any mistake, VU chancellor said.

will dig deeper

According to R. Balinai, after the theft, VU went through various library procedures, including customer service and book lending procedures, and installed new security technologies, which he did not elaborate on.

We did our own internal investigation, we spoke out, we cooperated both with police officers and with other state libraries, we shared our experience, said the chancellor. According to him, this will shape new storage practices.

According to Simon Kairis, Minister of Culture, theft is a good opportunity to bypass security procedures wherever there are cultural values:

Such cases always make us wonder if we are doing the right thing. We will go for a walk. If we have somewhere to dig deeper or coordinate inter-institutionally, we will do so.

He claimed that he discusses security issues with the leaders of the military under the Ministry of Culture during annual talks.

We are not only talking about theft, but also new forms of protest, for example, climate activists. It is necessary to adapt to this, said S. Kairys, bearing in mind the actions of protesters in the West, denigrating the values ​​of art with the aim of drawing attention to climate change.

According to the law enforcement, the data collected during the investigation gives reason to believe that books in Europe may have been stolen by thieves in various ways.

Sometimes they used false identities, posing as researchers when ordering books in libraries. While some members of the group communicated with library staff in order to divert attention, other alleged ones replaced the looted books with fake ones. In other cases, the members of the group simply ransacked libraries and stole books, which they had already torn up in advance, according to reports from Eurojust and the Lithuanian Prosecutor’s Office.

News agency AFP published evidence last year that books stolen in Poland ended up at Russian auctions. VU chancellor claims that he has no data that this is what happened with the books stolen from the university.

It is prohibited to reproduce the information of the news agency BNS in public information media and on Internet websites without the consent of UAB “BNS”.