Thieves stole the coffin of Friedrich Karl Flick, heir to a Nazi-era fortune, from his Austrian mausoleum

Friedrich Flick's companies used an estimated 48,000 forced labourers in the Second World War. On 22 December 1947 a Nuremberg tribunal sentenced him to seven years for war crimes and crimes against humanity, centred on slave labour and plunder. He was released on 25 August 1950. He died in 1972 and his son Friedrich Karl inherited most of the group. Neither paid compensation to the forced labourers. When Friedrich Karl died, Hans-Olaf Henkel said he was one of very few German industrialists who never joined the EVZ compensation fund. In 1985 he sold the group to Deutsche Bank^† and moved to Austria, where he became a citizen. Forbes put his fortune at $6.1 billion in March 2006. He died aged 79 and was buried in the family mausoleum at Velden am Wörther See. His heirs were his third wife Ingrid, their twins Victoria-Katharina and Karl Friedrich, born in 1999, and two daughters from his second marriage. Between 12 and 14 November 2008 thieves took his coffin from the mausoleum. The thieves reportedly demanded €6 million^†. Austrian prosecutors suspended the investigation in August 2009. On 29 November 2009 the coffin and body turned up in Budapest, and police arrested a 41-year-old Budapest lawyer and an accomplice^†. The family reburied him on 3 December 2009 and installed new security at the mausoleum. In 2026 the body lies in that mausoleum^†; the division of the estate among the widow and four children has not been published^†.