World Notes

The crime was one of the most spectacular -- and most tangled -- in postwar Austrian history. It riveted the attention of the public for 14 years. Last week, after a trial that lasted 13 months, the saga of the ill-fated freighter Lucona finally came to an end when Udo Proksch was convicted of murder and fraud and was sentenced to 20 years in prison.

Proksch, 56, the owner of Demel, the famous Vienna pastry shop, had been accused of engineering a bold scheme in which he loaded the 12,000-ton Panama- registered Lucona with scrap metal, insured the cargo for $18.5 million as "nuclear processing equipment," then had the ship blown up after it set sail from Italy. Six people died when the vessel sank off the Maldive Islands in January 1977.

The fraud was uncovered when a high-tech deep-sea search found the scrap metal and concluded that the Lucona had been deliberately scuttled. Two former government ministers were forced to resign after being accused of involvement in the scandal. Proksch plans to appeal.