Throw the book at the book thieves!
As £2.5m of rare works stolen in daring London heist are recovered in Romania...
‘Manuscripts are irreplaceable’
A £2.5MILLION treasure trove of historic books stolen in a notorious London heist has been recovered in Romania.
Detectives found the manuscripts – including works by Galileo, Sir Isaac Newton and Francisco Goya – in a secret underground bunker after smashing a major crime gang.
The 200 irreplaceable works were stolen to order in a sophisticated raid near Heathrow Airport in 2017.
Thieves abseiled into a warehouse, dodged motion sensors and stashed the books in 16 holdalls before hauling them up the ropes through skylights.
The gang – which is linked to the Romanian mafia – was also found to be behind nearly a dozen high-value burglaries across the UK.
Thirteen suspected members were captured by Romanian and Italian police last year with 12 pleading guilty.
Now, as a result of the convictions, police finally recovered the works this week. They were buried under a garage attached to a property in the rural Neamt area of north-east Romania.
The books were packed in bubble wrap and stashed in various suitcases, bags and two wheelie bins.
The jewel in the haul was a 1566 copy of De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium by astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus worth £215,000.
There was also a 1569 edition of Dante’s Divine Comedy.
Det Insp Andy Durham said: ‘ This recovery is a perfect end to this operation and is a demonstration of successful joint working between the Met and our European law enforcement partners.
‘These books are extremely valuable, but more importantly they are irreplaceable and are of great importance to international cultural heritage.’
The manuscripts, shipped from Italy and Germany, had originally been due to be sent to a Las Vegas for an auction three years ago.
The raid sent shockwaves through the rare books world.
Brian Lake, of the Antiquarian Booksellers Association, said: ‘Quite honestly I have never heard of a heist like this involving books – it is extraordinary.
‘Nothing like this has hit the rare books trade before.’ Burglars Daniel David, 37, and Victor Opariuc, 29, loaded the haul into a getaway van following the 2017 early morning raid.
The pair slipped out of the UK just hours later. A third man, Narcis Popescu, 34, rented a house in Balham, south London, to store the books for a few days.
Two other Romanians then entered the UK through the Eurotunnel in a van, picked them up and fled the country.
The vehicle used in the raid was later discovered abandoned.
It had been cleaned with bleach but forensic experts got a DNA sample on a headrest which helped identify the burglars.
Detectives discovered they were part of Clamparu crime group.
The gang based in the Iasi region in Eastern Romania have a history of complex high value thefts
Between December 2016 and April 2019, they flew in skilled burglars to target 11 warehouses in London and elsewhere in the UK, taking £2million of electronics and laptops. So far only the books have been recovered.