Police: Stolen coffin with remains of Austrian billionaire Friedrich Flick returned to family

Stolen remains of Austrian billionaire returned

BUDAPEST, Hungary — The stolen coffin containing the remains of Austrian billionaire Friedrich Karl Flick has been returned intact to his family, Hungarian and Austrian police said Wednesday.

A 41-year-old Hungarian lawyer identified only as Barnabas Sz. is suspected of masterminding the crime and was in police custody, Budapest Police Chief Gabor Toth told reporters.

The coffin was stolen in November 2008 from a cemetery in Velden, southern Austria.

Private detectives hired by the Flick family found the coffin last month in Budapest, even as the police in Hungary and Austria were investigating the crime, Toth said.

Private investigators and security companies from Austria, Ukraine and Hungary had been involved in the search, but had not informed police of their activities, Toth said. The police were looking into whether the private detectives had broken any laws.

The thieves were demanding 6 million euros ($9 million) in ransom for the casket and its contents, said Ernst Geiger, organized crime chief at Austria’s equivalent of FBI.

“This is a large case of blackmail that was carried out very professionally, although it involved a rather unusual instrument — a coffin,” Geiger said.

A Hungarian man, hired by the main suspect to drive a truck from Austria to Hungary with the stolen coffin, was detained by police last week. It was through him that police unraveled the rest of the story and the involvement of the private companies.

Several other suspects were still at large, including three believed to be Romanian citizens, police said.

Toth said an international warrant had been issued for the arrest of Laszlo “Grizzly” Farago, a Romanian man suspected of picking up a preliminary payment of euro100,000 ($150,000) in Vienna from the Flick family on July 3.

Flick died in 2006, when Forbes magazine put him among the 100 richest people in the world. He owned Austria’s largest private forest holding and led a German industrial empire.