Hunt goes on for bank raid kidnap gang

A garda manhunt continues tonight for an armed gang who held a male bank worker’s family hostage in a field before forcing him to deliver them cash.

Detectives are examining four crime scenes in a bid to track the raiders involved in the country’s latest ‘tiger’ kidnap.

Opposition TDs including Fine Gael justice spokesman Jim O’Keeffe described the robbery as horrific and shocking.

The senior officer leading the investigation, Chief Supt Peter Maguire said detectives were currently keeping an open mind on the case.

“It’s a very early stage of the investigation and we’re ruling nothing in and ruling nothing out,” he said.

Forensic officers were tonight examining the family home in Clontarf, National Irish Bank in Killester, a car used to collect and deliver the money and wasteground where the family were held overnight.

The four raiders broke into the National Irish Bank (NIB) employee’s Clontarf home at midnight and held his wife and three children hostage in a field at the junction of the Malahide Road and the Hole in the Wall Road in the Donaghmede/Baldoyle area.

The Gardaí refused to release any further details of their 12-hour captivity.

The man was then driven to the NIB branch in Killester and ordered to deliver a substantial amount of cash to a specific location in Clontarf.

A spokesman for the National Irish Bank (NIB) confirmed that its Killester branch on the Howth Road was the bank involved in the raid.

The bank was immediately closed today as forensic detectives searched for clues.

The NIB spokesman said: “We won’t be commenting further. The incident is the subject of a police investigation now and is in the hands of the gardaí.”

A Garda spokesman added: “We are appealing to anybody who noticed anything suspicious, be it people or vehicles, in the Clontarf, Killester or Donaghmede areas of north Dublin in the past 24 hours.”

The fourth-largest Irish bank, NIB’s reputation was tarnished in the late 1990s after revelations that it overcharged customers and encouraged them to evade tax.

It was bought by Danske Bank in 2005 and relaunched itself in April with competitive new products.

Today’s robbery is the country’s latest so-called “tiger raid“, named after the way in which a tiger stalks its prey before it strikes.

In March 2005, a gang of armed and masked men held a north Dublin family overnight and robbed more than €2m from a Securicor security van.

Robbers behind tiger raids require a detailed knowledge of bank or security staff including their daily journeys, job responsibilities and their families - which may come with inside help from a current or former employee.

The family of a senior member of staff is usually held hostage to force the employee to participate in the robbery.

The worker is forced to enter his workplace as normal and collect cash knowing that one false move could mean his family could be endangered.

Mr O’Keeffe of Fine Gael said: “This event is further proof, if it were needed, that the criminal underworld is alive and well. It is a stark reminder of how innocent people can suffer at the hands of criminals.

He referred to Justice Minister Michael McDowell’s comments earlier this week when he described Ireland as ‘one of the safest countries in Europe’.

Mr O’Keeffe claimed that Ireland has more than double the EU rate of robbery, and almost twice that of Greece, the next on the list.

Since the year 2000, more than €500mworth of property has been stolen, but only €50m has been recovered, he claimed.

The Labour Party’s Senator Joanna Tuffy said that gangs still appear able to walk away with huge sums of money with ridiculous ease.

More than €13.6m had been taken in robberies of cash in transit vans since 2002, she claimed.

“The likelihood is that much of this money was used to finance the importation of drugs and arms, further boosting the coffers of the gangs,” Ms Tuffy said.