A Copenhagen appeals court on Friday upheld a three-year prison sentence for a Danish woman found guilty of receiving and selling rare books stolen from Denmark’s Royal Library, but released one of her accomplices who claimed he did not know the books were stolen.
The appeals court upheld a district court ruling from June sentencing Eva Moeller-Kristensen (69) to three years behind bars for selling 77 books and 15 to 20 prints, including original editions by philosopher Immanuel Kant and poet John Milton, worth 12-million kroner (R12-million).
She was also ordered to pay the Danish state the 624 000 kroner she is thought to have made on the sales.
Moeller-Kristensen is the widow of a Royal Library head librarian, Frede Moeller-Kristensen, who stole the items in the 1960s and 1970s. He died in 2003.
The district court also sentenced her son Thomas to two years in prison, while her German daughter-in-law Silke Albrecht and an Irish friend of the family, Patrick Adam Peters, were each sentenced to 18 months.
Peters (45), who also appealed the verdict, meanwhile saw his sentence overturned, since the appeals court ruled that he appeared to have acted in good faith and probably did not know the books he was selling had been stolen.
Moeller-Kristensen’s husband had over many years stolen about 1 600 16th-, 17th- and 18th-century books and documents worth more than 100-million kroner (R102-million), including original editions by poet Thomas Moore and astronomers Tycho Brahe and Johannes Kepler, as well as a collection by German reformist Martin Luther and a series of atlases by Dutchman Willem Blaeu.
After the death of the librarian in 2003, members of his family tried to sell 21 of the books to auctioneers Christies, which alerted the Danish Royal Library after noticing markings identifying them as belonging to the institution. — Sapa-AFP