Heist may have been inside job, say police chiefs

POLICE chiefs have not ruled out the possibility that those behind one of the biggest bank raids in European history had someone working on the inside.

However, the gang that plundered over £20 million from the Belfast headquarters of the Northern Bank could be any of the dozens of highly organised criminal gangs which have mushroomed throughout the North since the IRA and loyalist ceasefires of 10 years ago.

Around 230 gangs are heavily involved in crimes such as armed robbery, drug trafficking, prostitution, extortion rackets and counterfeiting.

But many of them have links to republican and loyalist groups, who have tightened their grip on organised crime since the end of their terror campaigns.

Security chiefs regard the loyalist Ulster Defence Association as a euphemism for Crime Incorporated.

The Provisional IRA is also heavily involved in organised crime and, of all the paramilitary organisations, would be seen as the most likely to have the knowledge to carry off such a well-organised heist.

If this proved to be the case, it would end any lingering hopes of restoring the power-sharing government in the North.

The taking of hostages in exchange for large sums of money has become one of the most popular tactics employed by gangs recently.

Dissident republicans are believed to be behind a number of unsolved crimes, involving the use of hostages in the Strabane area of Co Tyrone.

During the summer, the dissident republican Irish National Liberation Army was linked to a robbery, which netted over £300,000 from an Ulster Bank in Strabane.

In the well-planned operation, a gang subjected a bank official and his family to a terrifying ordeal, holding them at gunpoint overnight.

The bank worker was ordered to go to his bank the following morning and ask his colleagues to hand over a large sum of money, or his family would be killed.

The security services have declared war on the crime lords, setting up the Organised Crime Task Force and the Assets Recovery Agency - based on the republic’s Criminal Assets Bureau - in a bid to put them permanently out of business.

Both organisations work together, but their successes have barely made a dent in the massive profits enjoyed by the godfathers of crime.

Earlier this year the Organised Crime Task Force, headed by North minister Ian Pearson, reported that the level of criminality remained very high.

But it insisted that operational activity by law enforcement agencies was having a significant impact on their illegal activities.

In recent months the Assets Recovery Agency has frozen the finances of some leading criminals, but the majority remain free to build up their illegal empires.