Major bank heist in Northern Ireland

Published on Tuesday 21 December 2004 15:33

A SUM in the range of £20 million was reported missing today after a gang raided the headquarters of the Northern Bank in Belfast, in what is believed to be the biggest bank heist in Northern Ireland history.

Two senior members of staff and their families were held hostage at their homes on the outskirts of the city as part of an elaborate plan to raid the bank's cash centre.

Assistant Chief Constable Sam Kinkaid said while an audit was still to be carried out on the full amount taken from the bank, an organised crime gang had made off with a "considerable" sum.

"I have been informed that the sum is quite considerable and may be in excess of 20 million," he said.

The gang behind it sprung into action on Sunday night, taking over a number of houses belonging to bank officials at around 10pm. Mr Kinkaid confirmed one of the houses was in Belfast and the other in Downpatrick.

"In both houses a member of the household worked for the Northern Bank," he said.

The officials, both keyholders, were ordered to go into work on Monday as usual. It was at the close of business that the operation to empty the vaults swung into action.

"Clearly this is a significant crime," Mr Kinkaid said. "Two families have suffered great trauma as a result of the actions of these criminals."

The robbery came a week after the Northern Bank, part of the National Bank of Australia group, was sold off to Denmark’s biggest bank, Danske.

The latest plundering of cash will go down as one of the biggest heists in history, joining the Brink’s-Mat and Great Train Robberies in the annals of record-breaking crimes.

In August 1963, the Great Train Robbers' haul was 2.6 million in banknotes – worth about 40 million today. The money was on a train en route from Glasgow to London, where it was to be destroyed, when it was ambushed near Mentmore in Buckinghamshire.

In November 1983, another gang stole 6,800 bars of gold from the Brink’s-Mat high security bullion warehouse near Heathrow Airport. The 26 million raid was carried out by six armed men posing as security guards.

According to the Guinness Book of Records the world’s biggest bank robbery happened during extreme civil disorder in Beirut, Lebanon, in January 1976. Guerrillas blasted open the vaults of the British Bank of the Middle East in Bab Idriss and cleared out safe-deposit boxes full of cash, gold, stock certificates and jewellery. The haul was valued at up to 22 million at 1976 prices.

Another raid, in Britain, is also estimated to have netted 30 million in July 1987. A gang broke into a safe deposit centre opposite Harrods in central London and cleared out the contents.

All these crimes were dwarfed, though, by the greatest robbery on record. It was also from a bank and happened during April and May 1945, as Germany collapsed at the end of the Second World War. The amount of gold looted from Germany’s Reichsbank during that time was estimated at 2.5 billion at 1984 prices.