Billionaire's body stolen from Austrian cemetery

THE remains of a billionaire whose family fortune was built on Nazi slave labour have been stolen from an Austrian graveyard.

Industrialist Friedrich Karl Flick, who lived in fear of being kidnapped, was 79 when he died in 2006.

An oak coffin containing the remains was taken from his family's mausoleum at a cemetery at Velden am Woertherse in what police believe may be an attempt to extort money from his widow.

The graverobbers struck last weekend but the theft was discovered yesterday. A stonemason hired to repair Mr Flick's gravestone, which had been damaged by vandals, noticed that the marble slab in the mausoleum had been moved.

Gottlieb Tuerk, of the police in Carinthia, said: "The background to this remains murky at present." Police estimate it would have taken at least six men to disinter the remains. The coffin alone weighed more than 18 stone.

Mr Flick's children and his widow Ingrid Flick, his third wife, who inherited about £4billion, are under police guard. The industrialist hired security all his life for his family. His brother and sister-in-law were kidnapped in 1991. The kidnapper was caught when undercover police paid the £3.5million ransom.

Mr Flick was the youngest son of Friedrich Flick, a German industrialist and Nazi who was sentenced as a war criminal for his use of concentration camp labour. In 1972, when his father died, Friedrich inherited most of the family business. The Flicks refused to pay compensation to those who worked as slaves in its factories.