KLM Looted

On Monday, February 17 at about 7:30 a.m., according to reports, a young man in his twenties, wearing a black leather jacket, jeans and sneakers, emerged out of the offices of the Dutch airline, KLM, located in Pariska Street. Judging by the story later told to police, with the youth also disappeared $ 270,000 US and 20,000 DM (the loot of one of the biggest thefts in Belgrade) as he vanished in the morning hub of the city. According to one version, the thief put his prize in a plastic bag; according to another, he carried it off in the same briefcase in which the money was held in the safe.

The following sequence of events was ascertained from the words of an unnamed KLM employee, the only person to see the youth: the cited employee arrived at work at 7:30 a.m. (the offices open at 8:00 a.m.), and several minutes later the thief followed suite. Without a mask on his face, but with a gun in his hand, the thief forced the employee to open the safe; he took the loot and disappeared. A few minutes later the employee summoned enough courage to follow, but to no avail; the culprit was out of sight. The security at the French Embassy, only two houses down the street, failed to observe anything suspicious, as did the Parking Service attendant who usually stands guard at the entrance of the plundered office. KLM employees are otherwise strongly discouraged from talking to reporters, and the Police Bureau (MUP) is not releasing any information.

Behind the solid wall of silence surrounding this incident, two questions linger, leaving the matter open to conjecture: first, why so much cash at hand; and second, as it was where it was, why weren’t any special security precautions taken? Having enquired about standard procedures of foreign airline companies which have offices in Belgrade, we learned that it is highly irregular to find such large sums (460,000 when converted into D.M.) kept in an office. "All money received from airline ticket sales is deposited at the end of each day in a commercial account at a bank with which a firm does business," a source from a respectable foreign establishment told "Vreme". Our source indicated that the only times when substantial amounts of cash (still insubstantial by comparison with what KLM held in their offices last Monday) appear in his company is after payments arrive from travel agents who just sold a significant number of airline packages. However, he pointed out, such money always arrives with an armed escort, and departs in the same way; in the firm it is always safely kept under lock and key, with only authorized personnel having access to it. A possible explanation is that the KLM money is in no way connected to airline ticket sales, but part of a different operation whose nature can only be guessed at.

This is in keeping with what was said by Tomislav Nikolic, security expert and owner of the firm "Tommax." "The conditions for keeping large amounts of money in a firm presume appropriate facilities--usually a room with a steel strongbox. Such a room must be locked from inside, from where there is 24 hour security surveillance, and to where access is limited to authorized personnel only. Anyone not fitting this description is received with gunfire from within the security area." Nikolic also noted the desirability of having the building in which a company dealing in large sums of money is housed, cordoned off, or at the very least separated and with limited access.

None of these guidelines were followed by KLM in this case. The single-story building housing KLM offices is at once residential and commercial, where commercial access is through a ground-level hallway. The smallish and not very imposing strongbox is in open view as one enters, and foreign currency is frequently left scattered over the bureau, taunting all who enter. As far as security is concerned, we were told that it amounts to a single individual of male gender who was conspicuously absent while we were there. His absence was even more imposing at the time of the looting (he punctually arrives at work at 8:00 a.m.).

"Big loots in Serbia are by and large arranged ahead of time in collusion with company personnel," "Vreme" was told by an individual in the know regarding underground activities here. "There is always a snitch who passes on information: the location of high-risk material, how much money is on the premises and at what time, who is responsible for what. He who looted KLM knew that he had to act on Monday, not Friday; he knew the time when security arrives; he knew who has the keys to the strongbox, and when they arrive with those keys. Our criminals are not of the type that swear by months of careful preparation, surveillance and espionage. They are too lazy for that; guys like that do not live in this city." Hearsay about town suggests that perhaps the looting was staged so as to hide discrepancies in company accounts, and even extortion is mentioned.

All conjecture aside, the fact remains that the looting was not witnessed by anyone except the above mentioned, unnamed KLM employee. Something could be ascertained from a careful examination of the tapes from the French Embassy surveillance cameras. Granted, those cameras do not have a view to the entrance in which the KLM offices are housed, but are placed so as to observe "the better part" of Pariska St. The question remains--could those tapes at all be released to our authorities, given procedural difficulties?