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Crime: Italian gang sold kerosene from NATO pipeline

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Italian gang sold kerosene from NATO pipeline

Cars are parked at a gas station in Rome. (Archive) Photo

© epa ansa Claudio Peri/Ansa/epa/dpa

NATO has confirmed an investigation into fuel theft from its CEPS pipeline system. The spectacular case happened several years ago, but details are only now coming to light.

From a At the end of the last decade, large quantities of kerosene were stolen from NATO’s pipeline system, which were then sold to unwitting drivers at gas stations. As a spokeswoman for the defense alliance has now confirmed to the German Press Agency, criminals had tapped one of the pipes in the pipe system for the theft in a field not far from the Belgian-French border. The crime was discovered in June 2019, it said. It’s about 800,000 liters of aircraft fuel that were stolen.

A few days ago, the financial police in Rimini reported for the first time about extensive investigations into the case in Italy. According to them, the stolen kerosene was brought to Italy by a local gang and sold illegally to unwitting drivers. It was initially not known whether there was any damage to vehicles. The Italian police even put the amount of fuel stolen at around 900,000 liters.

The case is particularly explosive because the Central European pipeline system (CEPS) that was tapped is an important part of the NATO defense system. It covers Belgium, Germany, France, Luxembourg and the Netherlands and is designed to meet the Alliance’s petroleum product needs at all times. For example, it connects air force bases such as those in Ramstein and Büchel in Rhineland-Palatinate with storage facilities, pumping stations and feed-in points.