Hole-in-the-floor gang tunnel their way to $65m in used notes
ANDREW DOWNIE
IN RECIFE
AN AUDACIOUS gang of robbers tunnelled their way into the vault of a branch of Brazil's Central Bank and escaped with more than £37 million in cash.
Police have launched a nationwide manhunt for the robbers who committed what is thought to be the biggest heist in Brazilian history.
The sheer volume of notes taken weighed 3.5 tons and the gang of between six and ten men are believed to have spent the best part of the weekend moving the cash out of the bank's massive safe and into getaway lorries, according to experts quoted in the Brazilian press.
"It's like something out of a film," said João Batista Paiva Santana, a local federal police chief.
Bank officials in the northern city of Fortaleza discovered the robbery early on Monday morning when they returned to their offices after the weekend break.
The bank closed at 6pm on Friday night and reopened at 8am on Monday when officials making their routine checks were stunned to find huge holes in the floor and wall and the cash gone.
News reports suggest the criminals began planning the heist three months ago when they rented a property close to the bank and opened a false business selling and fitting natural and artificial grass.
From there, they burrowed four metres into the ground and then dug a 80-metre long tunnel that took them directly under the bank's strongroom.
Then they dug upwards and somehow used drills and cutting equipment to fashion a hole in the two-metre thick walls of concrete and reinforced steel.
Once inside the safe they found a huge stack of banknotes that had been delivered for safekeeping and which were to be reviewed by tellers to see if they were still usable.
The bank routinely checks the notes, pale-brown coloured 50 reais, to see which are in good enough condition to be put back into circulation through banks, cash machines and businesses, and which are too tattered and frayed and must be burned.
Because the revision process had not yet started the serial numbers of the stolen currency are unknown and there is believed to be little chance of identifying the notes.
Police said the robbery was highly sophisticated and had been carried out by experienced professionals who had planned far in advance. The tunnel, for example, was reinforced with wooden beams and sandbags, illuminated by powerful lights and cooled by fans. Even the false choice of business was carefully made to allow them to shift large quantities of grass and earth out of the building without causing suspicion.
The robbers appeared to know the strongroom's 500 square metre floorplan well enough to tunnel up behind the room's five containers, something that gave them a modicum of protection.
However, police admitted movement censors and closed- circuit television cameras inside the strongroom failed to function, raising suspicions it was an inside job.
Police are refusing to answer questions about the case and Central Bank officials seemed at a loss to explain how they could have been so roundly deceived. Officials at the bank's headquarters in the capital, Brasilia, could not even confirm the amount of money stolen.
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