Grave robbers steal billionaire's coffin

Velden, Austria: The coffin including the remains of German-Austrian billionaire Karl Friedrich Flick has been stolen from a private gravesite at a cemetery in Velden, Southern Austria, on Sunday, police confirmed yesterday.

The coffin, which was interred under heavy granite slabs in a graveyard near the Flick family's house in the upscale lake village of Velden in Carinthia, has gone missing after thieves apparently used special equipment and other sophisticated tools in the middle of the night to lift the heavy grave slabs - which reportedly have a weight of several hundred kilograms each - to pull the billionaire's coffin out.

Flick's family is "confused and dismayed" about the robbery and has no clue about the motives, family advisor Joerg-Andreas Lohr told the media. Police say they suppose that "sooner or later" ransom could be demanded for the coffin and its contents, but so far they have received no message.

Flick died in October 2006 after a long illness at the age of 79. His wife and four children inherited an estimated fortune of five to six billion euros ( Dh23.21 to 27.84 billion). According to Forbes magazine, Flick was among the 100 richest people of the world.

Flick's fortune derives from an industrial empire built by his father, Friedrich Flick, who was one of Nazi Germany's most influential industrialists and served a prison term of seven years after being sentenced by the Nuremberg War Crime Trials for links with the Nazi elite and for using concentration camp labourers in his factories.

His son Karl Friedrich sold the industry empire in 1985 for about 5.4 billion euros to Deutsche Bank and moved to Austria for retirement and to avoid higher German taxation.

He met his third wife, Ingrid, who was more than 30 years younger, in a restaurant in Carinthia, where she worked, and built a big, secluded family mansion.