Posted on 10/29/2012 2:46:33 AM PDT by expat1000
An Austrian court ordered $66,000 to be returned to a bank robber who held up a bank 19 years ago.
Back in in 1993, after getting into financial difficulties, bank manager Otto Neuman stole $195,000 in cash, gold bars and gold coins from the bank where he was working. Neuman recruited two accomplices to stage a fake robbery at the Erste Bank, in Vienna's Doebling district.
By the time the police caught up with them they only found $66,000 in cash and gold. The rest of the money was gone. The gold was given to the insurance company who had already paid the bank for its loss, but the cash has been sitting in the Austrian Ministry of Justice until now.
Attorney Herbert Eichenseder who represented Neuman back in 1993 was shocked when he got a call from the court asking him to return the money to the robber. Mr. Eichenseder confirmed that he was recently contacted by court officials and asked to help them return the stolen money to his client. "I really did not believe what the court was telling me, but I checked and it was correct,” he said.
The bank did not want to take the money since they had already been compensated in full by their insurance company and the insurance company said they had not lost any money either because the
gold that they got back has increased in value so much that it covered all the money that they gave to the bank.
Mr. Eichenseder said: "I had to go to the archives in our cellar to find the details of the case, as it was already 19 years old and I managed to track down the details of the man and contacted him with the news. To say I was surprised was an understatement, my client provided me details of his bank account and the money has been transferred."
Unless the bank converted insurance money into gold, they lost out on gold’s recent rise.
In any case, here in the States if neither the insurance company nor the bank wanted the cash back (unbelievable!), then the the government would have confiscated it.
Yep. Let me ask a layman’s question,
At what point did the court decide the money bank robber stole actually ‘belonged to’ the robber?
In any case, here in the States if neither the insurance company nor the bank wanted the cash back (unbelievable!), then the the government would have confiscated it.
Oh great, so robbers would still get it.
In the U.S. (or any sane country) the insurance company would have kept the money. The insurance company, having paid the bank, owns the stolen assets and any appreciate or loss caused by a change in the value of the assets are the insurance company’s. If the gold had gone down in value (and it has and will happen) that would have been the insurance company’s loss.
It is contrary to public policy to allow a thief to profit (what if he had bought lottery tickets and gotten lucky?)
That’s what I don’t get. Why wasn’t the insurance company given the cash from the start?
The insurance company paid off the bank’s claim, in exchange for which they had title to the embezzled assets. When the assets were recovered they belonged to the insurance company, not the bank, who were “made whole” by accepting the insurance payment. In the not unlikely event that the assets had depreciated, the insurance company would have been out of luck. I recall reading about other cases like this in the U.S. where the insurance company happily kept the full value of the appreciated asset.
I don't disagree with the sentiment, but I prefer to look at it as the taxpayers being reimbursed for the cost of the trial and subesquent incarceration.
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