How do you steal millions of euros? In a trial in Bremen, cinematic tricks come to light. But only one minor character is on trial. Where is the main character – the woman who pulled off the coup?
Bremen – It’s about 8.2 million euros in booty. The employee of a money transport company in Bremen is said to have stolen this huge sum. Only since the coup on the Friday before Pentecost, women and money have been swallowed by the earth.
The Bremen Regional Court has been rolling up the spectacular case since Tuesday on a secondary line: A 24-year-old must answer as a suspected accomplice. The public prosecutor accuses her of complicity in a particularly serious case of theft, forgery of documents and other crimes.
The key figure is on the run
The defendant is said to have telephoned the main suspect during the act. She also helped prepare for the escape that was to go to Turkey. And they should have distributed part of the booty in the family of the wanted, said the prosecutor. The defendant herself received 26,000 euros as a reward. She was silent on Tuesday about the allegations. The defense attorney said that her client did not want to comment for the time being.
Because on the first day of the hearing it wasn’t even about the defendant, who looked younger than 24. The main role played the absent key figure, in legal German the “separately persecuted”. How did she manage to get the millions out of the well-secured building of the money transport company? The theft itself must first be clarified and assessed, said a court spokesman. Only then can one precisely classify the aiding and abetting of the accused.
Everything happened on May 21 in front of running surveillance cameras, from which the court only showed individual images on the first day of the hearing. Actually, the alleged thief should have worked alongside her colleagues when packing banknotes, said the company’s general manager as a witness. But she claimed that the computer at the workplace was broken.
So the woman was given an unobserved place. There she branched off – this is what videos are supposed to show – repeatedly from bundles of money and put them in a specially provided roll container. The money was then missing in the cassettes for ATMs or security bags with large sums in cash. A total of 15 banks and other customers are said to have received less money. The amount of the damage could only be calculated after a week and a half, said the authorized representative.
At the end of the shift, the alleged thief camouflaged the container with old cardboard, added a second waste paper container and pushed it in front of a small cash box. The colleague responsible first released one and then the other lock door. Outside, the woman received the supposed waste paper. She loaded her container into a rented van with stolen license plates. Another accomplice sat at the wheel and is under investigation. And that was the last thing seen of the woman and the money.
“She has not shown anything,” said the unlucky raven who had opened the lock on the witness stand. His colleagues had previously stated that he and the perpetrator had often flirted. She probably also wrapped it around her finger for the trick with the waste paper: She left a note in the airlock with her phone number and the promise of dinner together.
However, this witness also had evidence of – as he said – a “bad environment” of the colleague. And when asked by the court, he confirmed that she had shown him injuries the day before the coup. Allegedly the bruises and bruises came from a fall. But the witness did not rule out that she was beaten.
This leaves the mystery of whether the fugitive woman and her accused helper came up with the theft alone or whether someone else was behind it, such as organized crime. The criminologist Christian Pfeifer said in an RTL interview in May that a woman with eight million euros underground was in mortal danger. The public prosecutor’s office in Bremen is keeping a low profile when it comes to the question of accomplices. The investigation was ongoing, said a spokesman. The Europe-wide search for the woman has not yet brought any result. dpa
