£ 2.5m of rare books stolen in UK found in Romania
IRREPLACEABLE books worth £ 2.5million which were stolen in an Ocean’s Eleven- style heist have been found under floorboards in Romania.
The treasure trove includes works from the 17th century by Galileo, Sir Isaac Newton and the 18th century Spanish painter Francisco Goya.
They were taken from a UK warehouse by an international mafia gang, who cut holes in the roof, then abseiled down to avoid the sensors that would have set off alarms.
Det Insp Andy Durham, from the Met Police, said: “This recovery is a perfect end to our 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 of great importance to international cultural heritage.
Mafia
“If it wasn’t for the hard work of our Joint Investigation Team, these books would have been sadly lost to the world for ever.”
The 200 volumes were kept in a warehouse in Feltham, west London, and were due to be sent to Las Vegas for a specialist auction when they were stolen in January 2017.
They were found wrapped and neatly stacked in a cement pit under the floor of a house in rural Neamt, north- east Romania, by local officers on Wednesday.
It took the international operation, made up of the Met, the Romanian National Police and the Italian
Carabinieri, along with Europol and Eurojust, more than three years to track down the haul.
During the probe, the Met identified the suspects as being part of a feared Romanian mafia group, called the Clamparu, who were behind a string of high- value warehouse burglaries across the UK.
The gang flies members into Britain to commit specific crimes, then flies them out shortly afterwards, with the loot being taken out of the country by other members.
In June last year there were coordinated arrests and searches of 45 addresses across the UK, Romania and Italy as part of the investigation.
Thirteen suspects have been charged in the UK with conspiring to commit burglaries between 2016 and 2019 and conspiring to receive criminal property.
Court proceedings are ongoing.