Bank raiders 'will have to burn £13m'

Jayne Atherton|Metro13 April 2012

The gang behind one of Britain's biggest ever bank heists might be forced to dump more than half its £22million haul, it emerged yesterday.

The raiders drove away from the Northern Bank cash centre in Belfast with at least £13million in new notes, which will be nearly impossible to launder.

Police, who suspect the gang may have had paramilitary connections, are scanning CCTV footage to try to work out where the gang headed with the loot.

But money laundering expert Jeffrey Robinson said: 'If the thieves are smart they will take the US dollars and Euros that are there and burn the rest.'

The heist is thought to be the world's biggest peacetime cash theft.

The gang dressed as police officers to take hostage the families of two bank executives. They were told to work as normal at the bank on Monday or their families would be killed. The gang arrived at the bank at the end of the day, loaded the cash on to a lorry and drove off.

They took £12 million in new Northern Bank £10 and £20 notes, and more than £1million-worth of £100 and £50 notes.

But Mr Robinson, author of The Laundrymen, insisted the gang took too much in the wrong currency. He added: 'They obviously did not count on there being so much money and Northern Irish notes.

'The money is fundamentally useless. I suspect they know that by now.'

Earlier, it emerged that one hostage scrambled through a forest to raise the alarm. She arrived, distressed and soaked through, at a house near Drumkeeragh Forest Park, Co Down, on Monday night.

The woman's car was later found burnt out in the forest.

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