Lucona
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The Lucona was a bulk carrier that was built in 1966 at the Büsum shipyard and sunk in an explosion on January 23, 1977 in the Indian Ocean in the course of attempted insurance fraud , killing six of the twelve crew members.
In the course of the subsequent investigation, the incident expanded into Austria's biggest political scandal in the Second Republic , in which several top politicians were involved and which moved the country from 1977 to 1992. The Causa Lucona scandal or Lucona affair was mentioned in the media .
history
The Lucona was launched on October 15, 1966. The client was the shipping company August Bolten Wm. Miller's successor, Hamburg . The ship was initially named Steinberg and over the years was renamed Niolon (1971), Lucona (1974), Atlantic Progress (1975) and again Lucona (1976).
Lucona affair
The freighter Lucona was chartered in 1976 by Udo Proksch , the then authorized signatory of the Viennese coffee house Demel and enfant terrible of the Viennese society. The ship was allegedly loaded with a uranium ore processing plant in Chioggia in Northern Italy . The cargo was insured with the federal state insurance in Vienna for 212 million schillings (approx. 15.4 million euros). The addressee of the delivery was a straw man Proksch. The ship, which was equipped with an explosive charge from the Austrian army, was sunk on January 23, 1977 in the area of the Maldives in the Indian Ocean . The death of the twelve-man crew was accepted, six people actually died.
The federal state insurance, however, refused to pay out the sum insured because they suspected that the Lucona had not loaded the claimed valuable freight, but rather scrap , namely equipment from the abandoned coal mine of Oberhöflein and parts of a plastic extruder , which ultimately turned out to be correct should prove: The cargo represented a value of only 1 million schillings (about 73,000 euros).
It was never clarified exactly what the explosive charge was detonated with. Remote triggering by means of longwave would only have been theoretically possible at the great distance (6,000 km), as the receiver could have been brought on board under the waterline, but the use of a longwave transmitter would have been problematic. Ignition with an acid igniter was ruled out because of its unreliability, both with regard to ignition reliability and time. The most likely is to use a timer. The Austrian Armed Forces had time fuses that ran for a maximum of 21 days and a car battery was sufficient for their power supply.
The box with the cauldron containing the explosives was brought to Chioggia by road on December 29, 1976. The loading took place in the night of January 4 to 5, 1977, and the box was placed on the double floor of the ship in front of frame 84. On January 6, 1977 the hatch covers were closed, after which the Lucona ran out of Chioggia. According to the loading papers, 700 tons of cargo should have been on board, based on the draft marks it is clear that only a maximum of 388 tons, taking into account the ballast water even only 280 tons of goods were loaded. Because of the lighter load, the Lucona drove faster than with a 700-ton load and at the time of the explosion on January 23, 1977 would have been on relatively shallow water between India and Sri Lanka. Therefore, manipulations on the part of the charterer took place, which delayed the trip.
After the Lucona arrived in Port Said on January 10, 1977 around 7:00 a.m., the canal fee was not transferred in time, so that the Lucona was no longer able to sail through the Suez Canal on January 10, 1977, but only the next morning . The second manipulation was carried out by instructing the captain to change course towards Africa after passing the Red Sea instead of the bunker port Aden on the route and to bunker in Djibouti . Through this detour, the Lucona lost another day and was on January 23, 1977 at one of the deepest places in the Indian Ocean, at 4,192 m, when the explosion occurred at 12 p.m. GMT (4 p.m. local time). The time of the explosion is within the 21-day period of the time fuse, the explosion took place at 12.00 GMT, and the delays in the journey indicate that nothing could be changed at the point of ignition during the journey and therefore the journey of the Lucona became a " appropriate "sinking point had to be steered.
The following were killed in the sinking: Caspar Borbely (1st engineer), Beatrix van der Hoeven (fiancee of Borbely) as well as the sailors Carlos Medina, Vito Marcos Fortes, Andrew Davis and Silvester Roberts.
Exposure
The Lucona case was uncovered by the journalists Gerald Freihofner ( weekly press ) and Hans Pretterebner . The collected details processed Pretterebner literary in his book The Case Lucona , which he in 1987 in self-publishing published and had sent to persons within shipping circles.
enlightenment
To clarify the involvement of politicians in the case, especially political ties to the SPÖ (" Club 45 "), a parliamentary committee of inquiry was set up between 1988 and 1989, as a result of which the President of the National Council Leopold Gratz and the Interior Minister Karl Blecha (both SPÖ) resigned. The legal processing of the incident plunged the country into an unprecedented political scandal: 16 politicians, lawyers and top officials were removed from their posts, charged or convicted; the Austrian Defense Minister Karl Lütgendorf died in 1981, presumably by suicide.
On behalf of the Viennese judiciary, the US company Oceaneering , which specializes in deep-sea imaging, found the wreck of the Lucona at the bottom of the Indian Ocean on February 5, 1991 after a search lasting several days . A remote-controlled diving robot created 15 hours of video material and around 100 still images of the wreck. They show a field of debris on the sea floor: the bow of the ship with the anchor chain and hawse was some distance away from the rest of the wreck, the forward cargo hold was smoothly cut through, while the aft ship showed only relatively minor damage.
The trial against Proksch at the Regional Criminal Court in Vienna ended in 1992 with a guilty verdict for sixfold murder and a sentence of life imprisonment. Proksch died in late June 2001 after a heart operation while in custody. The second mastermind in the Lucona case - Hans Peter Daimler - was sentenced in 1997 by the Kiel Regional Court to a 14-year prison term for aiding and abetting sixfold murder and attempted insurance fraud. Indications of any involvement of foreign secret services ( CIA , KGB , Stasi and BND ) in this affair and the associated sham deals were brought before the court in Kiel, but not pursued further. The attempt to portray Daimler as a pawn sacrifice failed.
Cultural reception
literature
- Wolfgang Blum: How was the Lucona sunk? In: Die Zeit , No. 39/1995, September 22, 1995.
- Ewald Ehtreiber: Keyword Lucona affair . In: Oswald Panagl , Peter Gerlich (Hrsg.): Dictionary of political language in Austria. Österreichischer Bundesverlag, Vienna 2007. ISBN 978-3-209-05952-9
- Andreas Förster: Mr. Daimler and the dead from Lucona In: Berliner Zeitung , March 14, 1996.
- Hans Pretterebner : The Lucona case: Eastern espionage, corruption and murder in the atmosphere of the top government , self-published, Vienna 1987. ISBN 3-900710-01-5
- Hans Pretterebner: The network of power: Anatomy of coping with a scandal , self-published, Vienna 1993. ISBN 3-900710-02-3
- Genealogy of the crime In: taz , March 24, 2007. Parallels to the attack on the Moselle in 1875
- The world until yesterday: The system also survived Udo Proksch In: Die Presse , December 21, 2007
- Werner Kofler : Dream and Reality. An encryption . In: Amok and Harmonie . Wagenbach, Berlin 1985. pp. 31-55, ISBN 3-8031-0141-7 .
Movies
- Jack Gold : Der Fall Lucona , 1993. Pretterebner's book Der Fall Lucona served as a template for a free film adaptation with British actor David Suchet in the role of Proksch, renamed Rudi Waltz (Rudolf was Udo Proksch's first name).
- Robert Dornhelm : Udo Proksch - Out of Control , 2010.
musical
In 2004 the musical Udo 77 by the artist group monochrom was premiered in Vienna , which dealt with the case of Lucona and Udo Proksch.
See also
- Attack on the Moselle : Explosives attack with attempted insurance fraud with the Mosel ship in 1875.
- Noricum scandal
Web links
- The film The case Lucona in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Entry on The Lucona Case in the Austria Forum (in the AEIOU Austria Lexicon )
Footnotes
- ↑ See Panagl / Gerlich 2007.
- ^ A b D. A. Sattler: Steinberg - Volldecker / Shelterdecker - Building No. 221. February 15, 2010, accessed on February 16, 2010 .
- ↑ Pictures of the sunk Lucona ( Memento of the original from August 20, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 1.55 MB) Oceaneering En: Lucona1991 Page 27–30
- ↑ After a search lasting several days, the wreck of the Lucona , sunk on behalf of Udo Proksch, was found on February 5, 1991 in the Indian Ocean at a depth of 4,700 m . acoustic-chronik.at (1991)
- ↑ wega-film The Lucona Case
- ↑ Udo Proksch - Out of Control ( Memento of the original from March 27, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Trailer for the film
