Historic books worth £2.5 million found buried underground in rural Romania

A collection of 200 culturally significant books were found following the search of a house in Neamt, Romania.

The books were stolen from in Feltham, west London, in January 2017. It was a highly sophisticated burglary from a postal transit warehouse waiting to be sent to Las Vegas for a specialist book auction.

The suspects broke in by cutting holes in the roof and then abseiling down, avoiding the many sensors.

The books were stolen in 16 large bags, with the suspects leaving the same way they entered.

The collection includes works from the seventeenth century by Italian astronomer Galileo, Sir Isaac Newton, and the eighteenth century Spanish painter Francisco Goya.

The combined value is in excess of £2.5 million, but are deemed to be of international importance and are considered irreplaceable.

The Metropolitan Police worked with European law enforcement partners in Romania and Italy, as well as Europol and Eurojust.

The Met investigation identified the suspects involved were part of a Romanian Organised Crime Group (OCG) that were responsible for high-value warehouse burglaries across the UK.

The OCG flies members into the UK to commit specific offences and then fly them out of the country shortly afterwards, with the stolen property taken out of the country by other OCG members using different transport methods.The OCG is linked to a number of prominent Romanian crime families who form part of the Clamparu crime group. This group is based in the Iași region in Eastern Romania and have a history of complex and large-scale high value thefts, yet have mainly avoided prosecution by offending outside Romania.A joint operation with the Romanian National Police and Italian Carabinieri, supported by Europol and Eurojust, has since evidenced another 11 offences in London and across the UK where a further £2 million worth of property has been stolen, generally using the same method of entering through the roof.

This culminated in searches of 45 addresses across the UK, Romania and Italy in June 2019. Thirteen individuals were charged in the UK with conspiring to commit burglaries between December 2016 and April 2019.

12 individuals have already pled guilty and are due to be sentenced at the end of September. A final defendant will be tried in March 2021.

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