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Thieves make 40,000 litre diesel raid

Police are on the hunt for diesel thieves who stole a huge quantity of fuel from an automatic filling station in Vilhelmina, northern Sweden, with the raided goods estimated to be worth 600,000 kronor ($92,000)

Published: 10 August 2013 12:36 CEST

Thieves make 40,000 litre diesel raid

The culprits managed to manipulate the pump operated by IDS (International Diesel Service) to steal the fuel and carry out the heist according to police in Umeå.

It was an automatic pump, with the theft only discovered when a reading was done remotely in the company's Stockholm main office, showing that 40,000 litres of diesel had been stolen.

“It's not yet clear how it happened but it seems they managed to manipulate the filling station. Many others have used the pump afterwards so it is hard to establish a physical track,” Michael Karlsson, duty officer with Umeå police, told local newspaper Västerbottens-Kurien.

Police have since investigated the scene in order to secure any clues. Technicians from IDS have also inspected the automatic machine to establish how the crime was carried out.

“The timing of the theft is unclear,” said Michael Liljenberg, also of Umeå police, who appealed for witnesses to come forward with any additional information about the crime.

“For these kinds of crimes to be solved it requires close observation or camera surveillance,” he added.

Last year, seven men were arrested on suspicion of aggravated robbery and weapons crimes after a truck driver was beaten and robbed of 450 litres of diesel fuel at a rest area north of Gothenburg, western Sweden.

TT/Patrick Reilly

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Spanish banker gets jail term for trying to smuggle Picasso masterpiece out of Spain on yacht

Head of a Young Woman by Pablo Picasso Photo: AFP

The court also fined ex-Bankinter head Jaime Botín €52.4 million ($58.4 million), according to the Madrid court ruling issued on January 14th which was made public on Thursday.

It awarded ownership of the work, “Head of a Young Girl”, to the Spanish state.

Botin, 83, is unlikely to go to prison as in Spain first offenders for non-violent crimes are usually spared jail time for sentences of less than two years.

French customs seized the work, which is estimated to be worth €26 million, in July 2015 on the Mediterranean island of Corsica, halting what they said was an attempt by Botin to export it to Switzerland to sell it.

His lawyers argued at the time that he was sending it for storage in a vault in Geneva but the court found him guilty of “smuggling cultural goods” for removing the painting “from national territory without a permit”.

Botin, whose family are one of the founders of the Santander banking group, had been trying since 2012 to obtain authorisation to export the painting.

However Spain's culture ministry refused the request because there was “no similar work on Spanish territory” from the same period in Picasso's life.

In 2015, a top Spanish court sided with the authorities and declared the work of art “unexportable” on the grounds that it was of “cultural interest”.

Picasso painted it during his pre-Cubist phase in Gosol, Catalonia, in 1906. It was bought by Botin in London in 1977.

Botin's lawyers had argued that the work should not be subjected to an export ban since it was acquired in Britain and was on board a British-flagged vessel when it was seized.

When customs officials boarded the yacht, its captain only presented two documents — one of which was the court ruling ordering that the painting be kept in Spain.

The painting is currently stored at the Reina Sofia modern art museum in Madrid, which houses Picasso's large anti-war masterpiece “Guernica”.

READ MORE: Banking family's Picasso seized on Corsica boat

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