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But as Toni Musulin, 39, went on trial yesterday, charged with theft and fraud, the former security guard made it clear he had no wish to live up to his status as an anti-establishment figurehead. “They say that I’m Robin Hood, but no, I’m just normal,” he told the court in Lyons.
His hair grey and his complexion pale, Musulin sought to portray himself as an ordinary employee who had grown fed up with his bosses at Loomis, the Swedish security group where he worked for ten years. He had driven off in a security van containing 49 sacks of banknotes that he had just picked up from Banque de France in Lyons in an act of revenge, he said. “It’s always the small guys who get it in the neck, so I rebelled,” he added — prompting Jean-Hugues Gay, the presiding judge, to point out that he was using the Robin Hood rhetoric that he had just tried to cast off.
The mystery at the heart of the case remains the whereabouts of €2.5 million that has not been recovered. Police found €9.1 million in a rented garage two days after the robbery; Mr Musulin was in no mood yesterday to help them find the rest. “It’s not me who’s got the money,” he said.
He said he might have lost the money while transferring the funds from the security van to the Renault Kangoo he had hired for the occasion. “I was throwing the sacks in and they didn’t fall straight, of course. They kept sliding because they were plastic sacks. It was a nightmare and it got on my nerves,” he said.
The court was told that empty Banque de France sacks bearing Musulin’s fingerprints had been found in a bin near Lyons the day after the theft.
Musulin was found guilty as charged last night and sentenced to three years in prison. But he could see the term reduced by between 12 and 18 months for good behaviour, and since he has already served six months on remand, he could be free in a year or so to start spending the loot. He is, however, also being tried for insurance fraud after buying a Ferrari for €113,000 and then reporting that it had been stolen in May last year. The maximum term for that offence is five years.
Times Online |
