Hold-up ends horror year for NAB

By Peter Fray
Europe Correspondent

December 23, 2004

Just when Australia's biggest bank thought 2004 couldn't get any worse...

Battling to recover from a foreign exchange crisis, a debilitating board room brawl and a management clean-out, the National Australia Bank has now been the victim of what is believed to be Britain's biggest bank robbery.

A group of suspected paramilitary bandits netted more than £20 million ($A51 million) from the NAB-owned Northern Bank in Belfast.

The bad news for the bank is that, because the theft is covered by self-insurance, it will bear any losses.

The drama unfolded at 10pm on Sunday when masked and heavily armed bandits invaded the homes of two Northern Bank executives - one in Dunmurry, on the outskirts of south Belfast, the other at Loughinisland, in Country Down - and held them and their families at gunpoint.

With their families still under threat, the employees were ordered to go to work on Monday, carry on as normal and then let the gang in after closing. Just to be sure, gang members are believed to have tailed the executives into work.

After closing, around 6pm, the targeted employees opened the bank vault for the raiders using their security codes. The 20-strong gang netted so much cash that it took them over two hours to load it into a security waste truck.

It seems their only mistake was to underestimate how much transport would be needed to take all the money away. There was still some left.

It not yet certain exactly how much was netted. Police have put it at over £20 million, while some reports have estimated it to be up to £27 million, possibly higher.

The Northern Bank, the largest retail bank in Northern Ireland, and the National Irish Bank were recently sold by the NAB to Denmark's Danske Bank.

But the sale will not be finalised until early next year, leaving the NAB to feel the pain.

In Melbourne, the NAB said the robbery would not have any impact on the sale. "Most importantly, all staff involved in the theft are safe and are receiving appropriate care," it said.

The gang dumped at least one of the managers in the countryside after the robbery as they moved their haul to a safe house. Police said one hostage was treated for mild hypothermia.

Northern Ireland's Assistant Chief Constable, Sam Kinkaid, played down the involvement of paramilitary groups, saying it was "far too early" to prove a connection to either dissident Republican or loyalist groups.

But kidnapping bank managers, known as "Tiger kidnap", has been used before in Northern Ireland by paramilitaries, and an unnamed senior police source said the raid had all the hallmarks of the Provisional IRA.

The NAB has spent most of 2004 trying to rebuild after the $360 million foreign exchange currency loss. It has had billions carved off its market value and underperformed by about 5 per cent during a boom year on the markets. Investors shrugged off the latest losses with the price closing up 6 cents to $28.54.

- with Duncan Hughes