SECURITAS: FIVE CAUGHT, MILLIONS STILL MISSING
Money, money, money. The papers are dominated by filthy lucre today. Stealing it, spending it and losing it.
The conviction of five men for "Britain's biggest cash robbery" prompts much excitement. The Times reckons that £32m of the £53 Securitas haul is now beyond reach in northern Cyprus.
"The missing millions are thought to have been laundered through the purchase and resale of villas", it says.
It also reckons "Mr Bigs" involved in the raid have escaped to the Mediterranean, north Africa and the West Indies.
The Guardian carries the expert views of someone with form in this area: the train robber Bruce Reynolds. "Their robbery, like ours, was too big," he ruefully notes.
"If you really want to make money nowadays, you should go into hedge funds or be like Conrad Black."
Much attention is focused on Michelle Hogg, the woman who "shopped" the five convicted men. As a make-up artist she made masks for the raiders and originally stood trial with them. She admitted to using her bra straps to pin back one man's eyes to make them more slanted.
The charges against Hogg were dropped after she agreed to be a prosecution witness and name the men involved.
"She risked her life by turning Queen's evidence in order to testify against the gang," says the Times in a curiously English phrase in a piece otherwise littered with phrases from American crime fiction.
"She can never sleep," says the Mirror, which quotes a detective saying "people will pay literally millions to bump her off".
The Times imagines her life in hiding. "As Michelle Hogg prepares herself for a life forever looking over her shoulder, she may reflect this morning with mixed blessings on her chosen occupation. The skills as a make-up artist that first drew her to the attentions of the Securitas robbers could save her life as she prepares to adopt a new identity under the witness protection scheme."
* Anyone can steal - but few get away
* Times: The Securitas heist, the hostages and the missing £32m
* Times: Mistress of disguise will spend the rest of her life looking over her shoulder
* Mirror: Terror of the woman who shopped the £53m raiders
'FROM AUSTERITY TO IPODS'
If the five convicted men had got away with, what would they have spent their money on? Their spending patterns would have been very different from the train robbers, almost 50 years ago, judging by a new survey on changing trends in household expenditure.
The Telegraph says the survey found that Britain's families are spending more money just to have a roof over their heads than at any time in the last 50 years.
In 1957 the survey found that less than 9% of household money went on rents or mortgages - now it's 19%. Spending on leisure has soared to 20%, while for food it has dropped from 33% to 15%.
The Guardian says: "If the key to a nation's priorities lies in its shopping lists, then Britain has been transformed in 50 years from a society spending mainly on basic food and warmth to one transfixed by the delights of leisure and travel."
The Financial Times sums it up: "Fifty-year journey from austerity to iPods."
* Forget filling the coal shed: big cost of keeping warm is now a flight to the sun
* Telegraph: Britons spend one-fifth of income on homes
* FT: Consumers shift from austerity to iPods
BANK 'WAS WARNED' OF ROGUE TRADER
The main story for the Financial Times is still the lost billions at the French bank Societe Generale. It says French investigators claimed the alarm was raised over possible rogue trading by Jerome Kerviel as early as last November.
The news makes the position of the bank's chairman, Daniel Bouton, and Jean-Pierre Mustier, its head of corporate and investment banking, "increasingly shaky".
The French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, is quoted saying "no one can escape responsibility".
* FT: Alarm was raised on SocGen 'last year'
TORY MP'S JOB FOR HIS BOY
The Daily Mail leads with new financial revelations about the Tory MP Derek Conway and his family.
Under the headline "SNOUTS IN THE TROUGH (contd.)" it says Conway is already facing suspension from the Commons for paying his son Freddie £40,000 for "doing nothing". Now the Mail has been leaked documents showing that he also paid his older son Henry £32,000 in parliamentary allowances.
The Mail says: "The disclosure will fuel calls for MPs to face stricter rules on how they spend their taxpayers' cash. It shines an uncomfortable spotlight on the way many MPs pay family members as secretaries or assistants from public funds - Mr Conway also pays his wife, Colette, £3,271 a month as a registered parliamentary assistant."
The paper devotes a trenchant leader to the subject: "What is it about our political class that makes them believe they are above the law?"
Simon Hoggart, the Guardian's parliamentary sketchwriter, takes a similar line. "I wondered how many of us, charged with diverting that amount, would be asked merely to give some of it back and stay off work for 10 days. Only at Westminster."
After a string of scandals to hit government politicians, the Labour-supporting Mirror relishes the chance to put the boot into a Tory. It calls for Conway's resignation as a MP, adding: "If the arrogant rightwinger lacks the moral fibre, David Cameron must sack him or he'll also be guilty of spinelessness."
* Dreaming under a pyramid
* Daily Mail: Tory MP who paid student son £40,000 'handed another £32,000 of taxpayers' cash to his other son'
* Mirror: Sack this Con, Cam
KENYA 'NOT A RWANDA'
Kenya is sliding towards civil war, says the front page of the Independent. It carries a "chilling dispatch" from the tourist area Lake Naivasha, where it says 100 people have died.
On the front page there's a frightening picture of a man wielding a machete in front of burning tyres. But inside, Richard Down, director of the Royal African Society, warns readers not to leap to conclusions after seeing such images.
"Pictures of gangs of young men carrying spears, clubs and machetes to cut down strangers in their area look like Rwanda '94. But the cause is very different."
He explains that the Kenyan violence is rooted in economic resentment aimed at Kikuyus who dominate politics and the best jobs. "Gangs or youths are targeting Kikuyu in their areas, killing them and driving them out. In revenge, Kikuyu gangs are killing and driving out Kalenjin and Luo from their areas.
"Think Bosnia or Serbia, not Rwanda. This is going to be horrific and puts Kenya and the entire east African region at risk of collapse. But it is not genocide."
The Independent leader urges Kenya's leaders to settle the post-election dispute that sparked the violence. It describes the situation as "scandalous and lethal failure of leadership".
* Independent: 'They killed our people, so now we will do likewise. We are just revenging'
* Independent, Richard Dowden: The seeds of mistrust were sown decades ago, but this will not explode into genocide
* Independent, leading article: A lethal failure of political leadership
SHORTLIST FOR £2M TALL ORDER
The Times is thrilled about the prospect of a 50m high sculpture, at Ebbsfleet in Kent to mark the "Gateway to England". Five artists have been shortlisted for the £2m commission. They haven't yet come up with proposals, but the Times reminds us that one of them, Mark Wallinger, won the Turner prize with video of himself dressed as a bear.
"The artwork will be the south's answer to the Angel of the North," the Times says. But it will also dwarf Antony Gormley's 20m structure.
It will be bigger than Rio's Christ the Redeemer and Statue of Liberty in New York, the Times points out in a graphic.
The paper's arts critic, Rachel Campbell Johnston, reckons Wallinger should win. "He is consistently unpredictable," she says.
Meanwhile, many of the papers carry pictures of a gorgeous new swimming pool. Unfortunately this is not in Ebbsfleet or up the track at the Olympic site at Stratford, but in Beijing.
The Water Cube is the first "showpiece Olympic venue" to be unveiled ahead of the summer games, according to the Telegraph.
The Guardian devotes a central fold to a striking photo of the pool by Dan Chung.
* Times: Artists think big for £2m gateway to England
* Telegraph: Deaths cited at unveiling of China's 'Cube'
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