Jens Lapidus - Never Fuck Up

Cargo Logistics’ pickup of the cargo to bring to Arlanda Airport

On the morning of April 5, 2005, Cargo Logistics picked up a total of 19 courier bags at the three Swedish banks in downtown Stockholm, divided as detailed in Attachment 6. The job was executed by two employees from Cargo Logistics, Göran Olofsson and Roger Boring, using a vehicle adapted to service Cash-in-Transit. Olofsson had worked with Cargo Logistics for 20 years and Boring for 5 years. In accordance with standard procedures, neither Olofsson nor Boring knew anything about the value of the courier bags that were to be picked up.

At 1415 on the same afternoon, Olfsson and Boring arrived at the office of Wilson & Co—the freight agent—at Arlanda Airport, where they picked up the Air Waybill along with documentation marking the cargo. Olofsson and Boring then drove around 165 feet to Cargo Logistics’s warehouse on the airport grounds, where they delivered the 19 courier bags.

Cargo Logistics’ delivery

At around 1500 on the afternoon of the same day, Cargo Logistics’ warehouse acknowledged the receipt of the 19 courier bags by issuing a document entitled “Handling Report—Cargo Logistics—Valuable Cargo” (Attachment 7). Staff from Cargo Logistics placed the courier bags in locked safety boxes that were brought to a room in the warehouse that is called the “strong room” (hereafter referred to as “the vault”), where valuable cargo is locked and stored.

Armed robbery

The flight that the safe boxes would be traveling on was supposed to depart on the evening of April 5, at 1825. At around 1800, Fredrik Öberg, an employee of Cargo Logistics, was working inside the warehouse, moving safe boxes from the vault to the Cargo Logistics truck. The truck, a Nissan King Cab, would transport the courier bags to the airplane. While the work of moving the cargo was being executed, the door to the vault was open, as was the garage entrance to the warehouse, which faced the airport area. The warehouse’s emergency-exit door toward the street outside the airport area was also propped open in connection with the recent arrival of a courier from the courier service company Box Delivery. The emergency-exit door is situated directly adjacent to the vault.

At this time, around 1810, three men, two of whom were armed with firearms, entered the warehouse through the open emergency exit. The robbers threatened the courier from Box Delivery and Öberg, who were forced to lie down on the floor while the robbers took nine safe boxes from inside the vault. While Öberg was lying on the floor, he used his cell phone to call Falck Security, the security company at Arlanda Airport, and informed them that a robbery was taking place. Strangely enough, the Falck employee who received the call told Öberg to contact the police instead.

After the robbery, the perpetrators disappeared from the scene using a BMW 528, which has still not been found, and a stolen Jeep Cherokee, which was later found abandoned around 1–2 miles from the scene of the crime, with one safe box remaining inside. The robbery was immediately reported to the Arlanda police.

No camera surveillance

The Cargo Logistics warehouse is equipped with a total of 75 CCTV (video) surveillance cameras that run 24 hours a day. After the robbery, it appeared that the videotape in the camera located in the part of the warehouse where the robbery took place had not been replaced according to standard procedure (the videotape is 27 hours long). The videotape in the camera in question had therefore ceased to record at around 1300 on April 5, and the robbery was consequently not recorded.

Open emergency exit

The vault in the Cargo Logistics warehouse is situated directly adjacent to the emergency-exit door that leads to the street outside the airport area. The emergency-exit door cannot be opened from the outside and, according to Cargo Logistics’s standard procedure, is to remain closed. Despite this, the emergency-exit door had been left open at the time of the robbery, which made it possible for the robbers to enter the warehouse from the street outside the airport. The reason the emergency-exit door was not closed after the courier from Box Delivery had entered has not yet been determined.

Open vault

According to Cargo Logistics’ standard operating procedure, the door to the vault can only be opened by two persons together, one of whom (of managerial rank) uses an electronic key. In the situation in question, the door to the vault was ajar, whereby the robbers, after they had entered the warehouse through the open emergency-exit door, were granted direct access to the open vault. The reason for the vault door being left open has not yet been determined.

The preliminary investigation has been dropped

No perpetrators have yet been arrested. The prosecutor has decided to drop the preliminary investigation.

Cargo Logistics’ responsibility

Barclays alleges that, in the present circumstances, Cargo Logistics either deliberately caused the damage or is guilty of the kind of qualified neglect outlined in chapter 9, § 24 of the Aviation Act and which chiefly corresponds to severe neglect of a commercial contractual relationship. The following circumstances, among others, are of importance:

(i) The robbers were granted access to the warehouse from the street outside the airport area because the emergency-exit door was left open, which is against Cargo Logistics’ applicable rules and procedures.

(ii) Against Cargo Logistics’ applicable rules and procedures, the door to the vault was open, which granted the robbers immediate access to the open vault once they had entered the warehouse through the open emergency-exit door.

(iii) Cargo Logistics has neglected to follow applicable security rules and procedures by not replacing the videotape in the surveillance camera in the specific part of the warehouse where the robbery took place, whereby the robbery was not recorded.

(iv) This is a matter of a commercial relationship and the demands on Cargo Logistics’ organization, security, and professionalism can therefore be high.

(v) Significant damage has been incurred.

Niklas worked out in the apartment after his run. He was driven by routine. His philosophy: all training is built on habit, duplication, repetition. Alternating four times fifty push-ups with some leg exercises. Switching up four sets with free weights for his biceps with forty times sixty sit-ups. He sweated like a pig in an army tent. Stretched thoroughly. Wanted to keep the litheness in his muscles. Rested on the couch for fifteen minutes.

Stood back up. Time for the climax—tanto dori katas, knife warfare. Jogging was to measure himself, for conditioning and fat burning. The push-ups and the muscle exercises were necessary to maintain strength and to look decent. He’d admit it any day: vanity was his thing. But tanto dori was something else: relaxation and power. He could do it for hours. Like meditation. Forget everything else. Go into himself. Go into the movements. Go into the knife. The sweeps, the steps. The stabs.

He’d learned the technique six years ago from a couple of elite officers in a company he’d worked with in Afghanistan. Since then, he’d trained as often as he could. You needed space to do the movement sequences, it was like dancing. Couldn’t always do it when you were out in the field. But the empty apartment was made for close-combat technique.