Security questions over €7m tiger heist

An armed gang escaped with €7m after holding a mother and daughter hostage as a young worker was ordered to carry out the biggest ever bank heist in this country.

A six-year-old boy was held at gunpoint for seven hours with the women during the so-called tiger kidnap before the six-strong gang tied them up and abandoned them in a van on the side of a motorway.

Terrified employee Shane Travers, 24, was forced to raid Bank of Ireland’s central Dublin branch and load his car with laundry bags stuffed full of brand new notes from the landmark College Green vaults.

The €7m haul was ready for distribution and senior security sources believe they can trace the fresh cash and spot laundering attempts by matching the serial numbers.

Prime suspects are a notorious organised crime gang from Dublin’s northside.

Detectives inspected four crime scenes as bank chiefs prepared for senior gardaí to drill them on the necessary security measures to prevent a repeat of the dramatic dawn heist.

Justice Minister Dermot Ahern said he was shocked Mr Travers, a junior vault worker, had access to such massive sums of cash.

“I would be less than frank if I didn’t say that there are issues of concern in relation to how this happened and how this was allowed to happen,” he said.

The elaborate kidnap and robbery at the landmark building – Europe’s first purpose built Houses of Parliament, overlooking Trinity College – was similar to the £26.5m (€29.9m) pre-Christmas heist carried out by the IRA on the Northern Bank’s head office in Belfast in December 2004.

Minutes after the latest robbery, newly appointed Bank of Ireland chief executive Richard Boucher sent an email to all staff expressing sympathy but reminded employees to follow tried and trusted steps to foil tiger kidnaps.

Bank staff are told to raise the alarm the moment they are separated from the kidnap gang.

Other Bank of Ireland employees were in the branch as Mr Travers filled bags with cash. It is understood at least one was aware of the tiger heist but it is believed gardaí were not alerted until after the money left the forecourt – a breach of the bank’s security rules.

“These procedures are there for their safety and the bank staff’s safety and to ensure that these incidents don’t happen,” Mr Ahern said.

“These are very detailed procedures. Bank officials and most officials in the financial institutions know about these, but it’s easy for us to say this in the cold light of day.”

Opposition politicians also said the heist raised serious questions about security in banks.

Mr Travers was taken hostage yesterday evening at his girlfriend Stephanie Smith’s dormer bungalow, which she shares with her mother Joan in rural Co Kildare. It is believed the young bank official had also been living there.

Mrs Smith had been out for the evening with her daughter and six-year-old grandson.

Detectives believe the raiders struck as the women arrived home at 10pm and Mr Travers lay inside watching television.

The gang threatened Mr Travers and the women before smashing an ornament across Stephanie’s head.

Gardai believe all four were held at gunpoint through the night before the two women and boy were tied up, bundled into a van at 5.30am and driven 27 miles (44km) along a north Dublin motorway before being abandoned.

An hour later, Mr Travers was ordered into his car, a red Toyota Celica, and heading for the high-profile banking centre. By 7.15am he had left the bank with a car-load of money.

The tiger-kidnap – so-called as raiders stalk their prey before launching an attack when the victim is most vulnerable, on this occasion as a keyholding bank worker relaxed in his girlfriend’s house – came to a head during rush hour in a north Dublin suburb.

Mr Travers met a man at Clontarf railway station and handed over the car keys. The Toyota, registration number 99-D-88856, was later found burnt out a few miles from the drop-off.

Mr Travers walked into Clontarf Garda Station a few minutes after the drop-off while his girlfriend, her mother and the little boy managed to free themselves and also raise the alarm in Ashbourne, Co Meath, 14 miles north of the capital (22km) at around 9am today.

Tiger-kidnappings have hit Irish banks hard in the last few years with crime gangs initially targeting cash-in-transit delivery vans before taking hostages in their own homes in a bid to outsmart beefed-up security.