A few steps from where we start our tours at the front of Belfast City Hall is the site of a shocking and audacious crime that took place twenty years ago. On the 20th December 2004, £26 million was stolen from the Headquarters of the Northern Bank (now Danske Bank) in one of the largest bank robberies in British or Irish history.
Late on the previous evening, members of an organised crime gang, widely believed to be the Provisional IRA, arrived at the homes of a number of key Northern Bank staff and took their family members hostage.
These staff members were then compelled to go to work as normal and during their shifts they had to work together and remove vast sums of cash from the bank vaults, with the threat of certain death facing their loved ones should they contact police.
A test run was conducted where one of the staff delivered one million pounds in a holdall bag to a gang member nearby.
When this test was achieved without any alarms going off, the bank staff were then forced to remove over £26 million from the vaults and help the gang load the crates of cash into a waiting van in the narrow side street.
The street beside the Northern Bank
This happened right under the noses of a passing police patrol, who thought the late-night activity was just business as usual.
Only when the gang had safely made their escape were the terrified family members released by the balaclava men at various locations in the countryside.
The enormity of this highly planned and tenacious robbery shocked the Northern Irish public. However the repercussions went far beyond.
Given the fact that police, the press and government sources blamed the IRA as the only organisation possessing the necessary manpower, expertise and coordination to pull it off, the fragile Northern Ireland peace process at the time was put at risk.
CCTV of the Northern Bank Robbery
Despite Sinn Fein, the IRA’s political wing, denying that the paramilitaries had carried it out, huge pressure was directed on the Irish Republicans to finally ditch all criminal activity.
The belief that the robbery was carried out to provide a “pension fund” for IRA members after the organisation was formally stood down was also denied and the robbery remains largely unsolved, with those responsible either still at large or now deceased.
If you want to find out more about the Northern Bank Robbery, I can recommend a series that Glenn Patterson made for BBC Sounds called The Northern Bank Job.
