Four people were arrested in Georgia as part of a Europe-wide operation to bust a gang of thieves specialized in the stealing of rare books, the Georgian Prosecutor-General's Office said on April 25. Separately, the EU police agency Europol said in a statement that the gang was believed to be responsible for the theft of at least 170 rare books by Russian authors, such as Alexander Pushkin and Nikolai Gogol. Some books had been sold at auction houses in St Petersburg and Moscow, "effectively making them irrecoverable," Europol said. The damage is estimated at 2.5 million euros ($2.7 million), it said. To read the original story by RFE/RL's Georgian Service, click here.
4 Arrested In Georgia For Stealing Rare Books In Europe
A copy of a first edition of Alexander Pushkin's The Prisoner Of The Caucasus, which was one of the targets of book thieves. The original was published in 1822.