400,000 euros loot

Hundreds of bank safe deposit boxes looted – trio sentenced

The trial took place at the Salzburg Provincial Court(Bild: Tschepp Markus)

Hundreds of bank safe deposit boxes looted, 400,000 euros in loot! A trio from Lithuania had to answer to the court in Salzburg on Tuesday and delivered a bizarre spectacle ...

The charges are massive, the indictment correspondingly long! Three men from Lithuania stood before the regional court on Tuesday. The trio is alleged to have broken into and looted bank safe deposit boxes throughout Austria over a period of years. According to the indictment, the men made almost 400,000 euros in loot, plus an immense amount of property damage.

In the dock, the men, all Lithuanians aged between 43 and 52, became entangled in contradictions. The three men, who are known to the police - one of the accused already has 14 previous convictions (!) - only partially confessed.

Gaps in memory and confused statements
One man took responsibility for only two burglaries in Deutschlandsberg and Kapfenberg. However, because of his "drug and alcohol consumption" he had memory problems, he stated on the record. He gave Judge Günther Nocker completely different information than he had given the police during his interrogation a few months ago.

Why? "The police told me what to say," the Lithuanian man claimed like a prayer wheel. The judge could only shake his head in disbelief. The two other defendants also provided little useful information.

Several years in prison
The court was not convinced. Late in the afternoon, it gave all three Lithuanians longer prison sentences of 4.5, three and 1.5 years. The sentences are already legally binding.