Sergey Burmistrov, once affiliated with Russia’s Ministry of Culture and now the owner of the Litfond auction house in Moscow and St. Petersburg, is accused of fencing valuable volumes taken from the university collection, according to Polish news outlet Onet.
An investigation has found that 78 rare books worth more than PLN 3.8 million (EUR 0.9 million) disappeared from the Warsaw library over the course of nearly a year. Among them were first editions of works by Alexander Pushkin and Nikolai Gogol. Similar thefts have occurred across Europe, including in France, Germany, and the Baltic states.
According to prosecutors, the thefts from Warsaw were masterminded by Mikhail Z., a Russian national who gained the trust of library staff by posing as a literary historian. "He was chatty, full of anecdotes, and could talk about books for hours," Onet quoted investigators as saying. “He claimed to represent Georgian literary scholars, completing the image of a typical bookworm.”
From December 2022 to October 2023, Mikhail Z. visited the library almost daily, frequently stepping out for cigarette breaks—during which he smuggled valuable books out, often hidden under his clothes or in a bag. He would hide the volumes in a restroom and retrieve them when leaving. In their place, he left crude forgeries.
“These fake books weren’t even particularly well-made,” said Bartosz Jandy, a prosecutor and member of the international investigative team “Pushkin.” “They were often entirely different titles, with pasted-in pages featuring photocopied library stamps and barcodes.”
The scheme exploited lapses in library security. Returned books weren’t thoroughly checked—staff relied on matching barcodes. After a 2020 relocation of the rare books collection, staff also received no additional training on handling valuable volumes.
The stolen books were passed on to a bus driver traveling the Warsaw–Minsk route, who then delivered them to unidentified buyers. Payment was made in cryptocurrency.
A turning point came in October 2023, when two Georgian nationals—Mat T. and Ana G.—ordered eight rare volumes at the reading room, then disappeared after a smoke break. Five books were missing from their desk. The pair fled to Vienna and then Tbilisi, where they learned they wouldn’t be paid—because they had mistakenly stolen the fake books left by Mikhail Z.
Ironically, this blunder helped reveal the larger scheme. "Had Mat T. and Ana G. used the same method as Mikhail Z.—replacing originals with fakes—the thefts might have gone unnoticed even longer,” noted Onet.
Authorities arrested Mikhail Z. in Lithuania in September 2025. He confessed to the thefts but gave investigators the name of a fictitious Moscow antiquarian. “We believe he’s protecting someone,” said Jandy. While the mastermind remains unidentified, investigators traced several stolen works to Litfond, Burmistrov’s auction house.
Though the Warsaw district prosecutor’s office plans to charge Burmistrov, Poland is unlikely to secure his extradition. “Given the current geopolitical situation, we cannot carry out any legal action involving this individual,” Jandy said. “Still, he will be sought internationally.”
As for recovering the missing books, prospects remain dim. “There’s little hope of retrieving the rare prints in the coming years,” Jandy added.
The prosecutor also raised suspicions of higher-level involvement. “It’s hard to say whether this was directed by the Russian state or oligarchs,” he said. “But it’s telling that all these thefts across Europe began after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.”
(jh)
Source: Polish Radio