By IANS,
Buenos Aires : A former employee of an oil services company was arrested in the Argentine city of Neuquen for stealing radioactive material and demanding $500,000 for its return, EFE reported.
Two masked men stole the material last Thursday from oil services company Baker Atlas’s offices in Neuquen by overpowering a security guard and demanding the keys to the storage area for radioactive materials.
The fled with a sealed lead-lined container holding 40 kg of the radioactive material.
Several hours later, a caller demanded that the company pay $500,000 to get the container back, the Clarin newspaper reported.
The police and Baker Atlas tried to find the container and managed to identify the robbery’s mastermind, a former company employee who was arrested Saturday while transporting the material in the trunk of a taxi.
The radioactive material was worth no more than $5,000, the newspaper said.