If a person fails to pay their bill, or owe a victim damages as part of a criminal case, the Swedish Enforcement Agency can as a last resort sell off their assets to settle the debt.
They do so by auctioning off the assets and normally, we’re not talking about anything out of the ordinary: cars, furniture, various other gadgets or homes in extreme cases.
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But once in a while, more unique items crop up.
A life-size fantasy sex doll
Bianca, according to the producer Ultimate Fantasy Dolls, has intricate hazel eyes, strawberry-blonde hair, supple lips and… we’ll stop it right there. She’s also up for sale in an ongoing auction by the Swedish Enforcement Agency, which has grabbed headlines in Sweden after the Expressen tabloid covered the story this week.
The asking price is 15,000 kronor but it will be sold to the highest bidder. The auction ends on Thursday and at the time of publication the highest bid was 7,200 kronor.
Bianca comes with a wig, underwear, user guide and has, thank goodness, never been used.
The Enforcement Agency stressed to Swedish media that it doesn’t make any moral judgment about the items it auctions off to collect debts. The only requirements are that they should be legal to sell and that they should be worth at least 1,000 kronor.
That means a sex doll is not the only peculiar thing the agency has had to sell…
Nineteen bottles of nitrous oxide
Nitrous oxide, or laughing gas (lustgas), is commonly used when giving birth, but has seen increasing popularity as a party drug. Despite warnings by doctors that it could have severe health effects if used the wrong way, it’s possible to buy the gas online.
Last year, it was also possible to buy it via the Enforcement Agency’s auction, with 19 bottles of the gas put up for sale online, each containing 640 grams per bottle – showing again that the agency really doesn’t have a choice when it comes to deciding what’s appropriate to sell, as long as it’s legal and fetches at least 1,000 kronor.
Ten thousand cacti
Near a town called Grästorp, north-east of Gothenburg, stood a greenhouse. In that greenhouse stood up to 10,000 cacti and a presumably perplexed debt collector.
The plants, ranging from seedlings to two-metre high cacti, were eventually snapped up by two friends in Malmö, including a former doctor who had left medicine to focus on cacti, according to public broadcaster SVT which couldn’t resist covering the story.
They paid over 30,000 kronor for the plants last year and set up a cactus exhibition in Malmö, which is still available to visit online, as well as via their Instagram page.
A ring linked to gang crime
A ring that used to belong to a person within the criminal Foxtrot network, carrying the fox symbol associated with the gang, was controversially auctioned off earlier this year.
The agency described it as “unpleasant” but reiterated that it’s their job to sell items that can be used to collect debts, and are not allowed to question the propriety.
The ring was originally sold for 66,500 kronor, but the buyer never paid up. When the Enforcement Agency failed to find someone willing to buy the gang crime merch, it eventually decided to sell it to a purchaser who was to melt the gold, or as the agency’s national coordinator against crime told TV4: “like destroying the ring of Frodo”.
A wind farm
In 2016, three wind turbines on the Peuravaara hill in Kiruna, Sweden’s northernmost municipality, were sold to a buyer for 2.1 million kronor. The turbines were previously owned by a foreign company and the Enforcement Agency received six bids in total.
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