Former Provos had 'the right skills' to carry out £40m raid

Police sources in Ulster revealed they were convinced the gang, who stole up to 40 million in cash from the Northern Bank on Monday, were ex-paramiltaries, most likely former members of the Provisional IRA with experience of weapons and money laundering.

Detectives also suggested the robbers would not have been able to carry out the huge raid on the bank’s headquarters in Donegall Square West, Belfast, without inside information and ongoing co-operation from current or former employees.

The scale of the raid has stunned the province’s police officers, who are in the middle of a major offensive against organised crime in Northern Ireland, which is worth an estimated 1 billion a year. Assistant Chief Constable Sam Kinkaid confirmed last night that his officers were examining hundreds of hours of CCTV footage in the hunt for the robbers, examining videotapes from cameras positioned in and around the bank. He said: "A bank audit has yet to establish exactly how much was taken, although police sources have put the total as high as between 30 or 40 million.

"This was not a lucky crime, this was a well-organised crime. We have discovered a burnt-out vehicle that may be the van used to remove the money.

"The van was found in Drumkeeragh Forest, Co Down, late on Tuesday night. At the moment a great deal of our focus is on examining CCTV footage in Belfast city centre which we hope will indicate the route the robbers took.

"This is clearly one of the most audacious and well-planned robberies I have ever encountered. This was a professional operation carried out by extremely serious criminals."

Speaking to The Scotsman, a police source said that if the raid was carried out by former terrorists, as suspected, they may already have a plan to launder the money. He said: "At the height of the Troubles, the Provisional IRA in particular were extremely adept at hiding and laundering money, so it is obviously a serious concern if they are involved in this heist."

The meticulously planned operation began late on Sunday evening, when members of the gang took over the homes of Kevin McMullan and Chris Ward, two senior executives of the Northern Bank’s staff.

In the first raid, the armed men, posing as police officers, went to Mr McMullan’s home in Loughinisland, Co Down, and told him a relative had been killed in a car crash. After gaining access to his house, they put a gun to his head, tied him up and held him captive. They then kidnapped Mr McMullan’s wife, Karen, and took her to another location, where they held her blindfolded.

At the same time, Mr Ward and his family were being targeted by the robbers as they watched television in their family home in Poleglass, on the western outskirts of Belfast. The bank official was tied up along with his mother, father, brother and his brother’s girlfriend and guarded overnight by the armed and masked men.

At 7:30am, Mr Ward and Mr McMullan were separately ordered to drive to work, park their cars, go to their desks, chat normally with colleagues and engage in their daily business routines - with the warning that their family members would be murdered if they raised the alarm.

By 4:30pm, at the close of business, members of the gang arrived at the headquarters, parking their white transit van in a loading bay, and were given access to the cash distribution centre where the vaults were full of money scheduled to be distributed to the bank’s 95 branches and high-street dispensing units in and around Belfast.

The money was then taken out of the bank in two separate runs into a waiting white, box-type van with a specially fitted tail-lift. Four hours later, the gang escaped with their van filled with millions in both used and new Northern Ireland notes. They later released the two bank managers to be reunited with the members of their families taken hostage.

At 11pm, Mrs McMullan, suffering from exposure, made her way to a house after being left in Drumkeeragh Forest Park, Co Down, between Ballynahinch and Castlewellan. Her car was later found burnt out in the Forest Park.

Don Price, the Northern Bank chief executive, last night said that staff are to receive counselling to help them cope with the ordeal.

He said: "Everyone is shocked at what happened at our cash centre on Monday evening. Our main concern is for the staff involved. It is difficult to imagine the ordeal that they have been through. We will do everything possible to help them through the trauma they have suffered."

Yesterday, the National Australia Bank, the owners of the Northern Bank, revealed they would have to bear the loss. They confirmed they had no external insurance policy to offset the losses for the UK’s biggest bank raid. The owners also insisted the robbery would have no knock-on effect for the sale of the Northern to the Danish Danske Bank Group, which was announced earlier this month.

It emerged last night that most of the money stolen was in Northern Irish notes and virtually all the rest was in denominations printed by other banks in the province, which experts claim will make it next to impossible to shift in any sizeable quantities elsewhere in the UK or Irish Republic.

Financial experts claimed that despite pulling off one of the largest and most daring cash robberies of all time, the robbers now faced a difficult task laundering the money. According to John Horan, a money-laundering expert with accountants Harbinson Mulholland, the robbers may find themselves victims of their own success: "The first problem for the robbers is the stolen notes each have their own code, making them easy to identify but the majority are denominated in Northern Ireland currency," he said. "Although this is legal tender throughout the United Kingdom, far fewer notes of this type tend to be in circulation outside Northern Ireland, making any effort to disperse them in England more risky.

"Furthermore, the laws governing reporting of suspicious money-flows have been tightened up over the past two years, making it far harder for the criminals to discreetly invest their ill-gotten gains in a piece of real estate or an Old Master.

"More likely, however, is that the robbers will attempt to smuggle the money out of the United Kingdom in multiple consignments so as not to jeopardise the entire haul," he added. "Drug-laundering organisations in South America and Russian criminal gangs operating across Europe may provide a ready conduit for the money, channelling it through banks willing not to ask too many questions."

Military planning of bank gang

DETECTIVES in Belfast claimed yesterday that the gang behind Monday’s robbery on the Northern Bank’s Belfast headquarters planned it like a military operation, a fact that almost certainly suggests paramilitary involvement.

SUNDAY 10pm:

The gang takes over the homes of two senior members of the bank’s staff. The houses targeted are at Dunmurry, on the outskirts of south Belfast, and Loughinisland, a small village in the Co. Down countryside, half an hour’s drive from the city. The men are armed and masked as they threaten the terrified families who were preparing for Christmas. The families are driven off into the night and held at undisclosed locations in freezing temperatures.

MONDAY 7:30am:

Both managers are ordered to drive to work, park their cars, go to their desks, chat normally with colleagues, engage in their daily business routines with a warning: any hint of alarm and your family is in danger.

4:30pm:

The premises on Donegal Square West, just yards from Belfast City Hall’s Christmas tree, draped with thousands of festive lights, close for the day. Thousands are on the streets festive shopping as the gang move in.

6pm:

As carol singers entertain the crowds wrapped up against the sub-zero temperatures, the gang rendezvous with the managers and prepare to clear out the cash distribution centre where the vaults are heaving with money that has just arrived. Special security codes need to be tapped in before access can be achieved. Yet with the threat of bloodshed and panic in the air, security staff have been left with no choice but full co-operation.

8:30pm:

It has taken over two hours to shift the cash from below ground upstairs and out into Wellington Street where a truck is sitting with its engine running and a tense and nervous driver with a mobile phone in his inside pocket at the ready.

10pm:

The two bank managers are freed to be reunited with their families and discover to their relief no-one has been harmed. But at least one needs hospital treatment for hypothermia.

11:45pm:

Police and senior officials at Northern Ireland’s largest bank are alerted to the raid. Sam Kinkaid, head of the Police Service of Northern Ireland’s Crime Operations branch, is briefed and immediately signals the start of the hunt for the gang involved.

Hostage wife was dumped by raiders

THE wife of one of the executives forced to hand over millions of pounds in the Belfast bank raid was held terrified and blindfolded for 23 hours, it was revealed yesterday.

Her ordeal began at 10pm on Sunday evening when men dressed as police officers called at her remote home in Loughinisland, Co Down, claiming that a close relative had been killed in a serious road accident. Once inside the bungalow, they produced a gun and threatened the executive, Kevin McMullan, and his wife.

Mr McMullan was tied up and held until another bank employee was brought to the house. They were briefed on how they were to act the following day. The gang then dressed his wife Karen, in her mid-twenties, in a blue boiler suit and trainers to prevent them leaving any forensic traces. As a further precaution she was blindfolded and told she would be shot if she tried to escape or raise the alarm and was then taken away in a car to an unknown location.

On Monday, when the members of the gang who had kidnapped her received a call saying the bank raid had been successfully completed around 9pm on Monday evening, they bundled her, still blindfolded, into her own car and she was driven about 20 miles to Drumkeeragh forest along narrow roads. There she was taken from the vehicle and told to make her own way home.

She watched as they set fire to her car, leaving it blazing as they drove off, it is thought, towards the border with the Irish Republic.

Mrs McMullan then stumbled in the pitch black out of the forest in freezing conditions and on to the road in the foothills of the Mourne Mountains. In a state of collapse, she stopped at the first house she saw, about half a mile from where she had been dumped.

The man who opened the door to her - and who asked not to be identified last night - said: "It was a shock to open the door at that time of night and see this poor woman on the doorstep. She had been crying and she was in a dreadful state and seemed to be absolutely terrified.

"The blue overalls she was wearing were wet and mud-stained and she seemed to have scratches about her face and hands. She looked as if she had been badly manhandled.

"Even though she was in such a state, she seemed to be holding herself together very well. She wouldn’t tell us much about what had happened to her, just that she had been held hostage and that a ransom had been paid. She used our telephone to call the police but didn’t say too much to them in the call.

"We know now that she wanted to be sure that her husband was safe before she revealed what had been going on. Looking back on it, she was incredibly brave. We were just glad that we were in because she might have had to walk on a long way before she found another occupied house. "

The family of her husband’s colleague, Chris Warde, was suffering a similar ordeal after other members of the gang burst into their home at Poleglass on the outskirts of Belfast. They took Mr Warde away, driving him to Loughinisland.

His mother, father, brother and his brother’s girlfriend were also tied up and guarded by armed and masked men for around 24 hours.