Cash from heist found at police club

The Seattle Times: Nation & World: Cash from heist found at police club

DUBLIN, Ireland — Some of the money stolen in December during a Northern Ireland bank heist worth $50 million was found in the restrooms of a Belfast country club run by police, Northern Ireland authorities said yesterday.

Police said currency worth $95,000 was abandoned Friday in five packages and discovered after an anonymous tipster called the police-complaints authority in the British territory.

In a statement, officials of the Police Service of Northern Ireland said they suspected that whoever planted the money in the New Forge country club did so "in an effort to distract the police from investigating the Northern Bank robbery."

A detective in Belfast, speaking to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity, said the money was unlikely to produce any leads in the hunt for the alleged Irish Republican Army gang responsible for the Dec. 20 crime — the biggest cash heist in history.

In the neighboring Republic of Ireland, more than 100 detectives spent a third day scouring piles of cash, financial records and computers seized in raids nationwide against suspected IRA money launderers.

The swoops netted about $4.75 million in cash, most of which was found in the County Cork home of private banker Ted Cunningham.

He walked free from a Cork police station yesterday after two days' interrogation, but police said they were preparing a file of evidence against him to send to state prosecutors, a process that could take weeks.

A Republic of Ireland detective involved in the raids told the AP on condition of anonymity that police were close to confirming that at least one consignment of cash seized Wednesday night came from the raid on the Northern Bank.

Most of the $115,000 in cash that was found in a house in the Douglas suburb of Cork City consisted of newly printed British bank notes bearing the Northern Bank's own design. They appeared to bear serial numbers matching those of stolen notes, he said.


Such a confirmation would be the first public breakthrough for police since a well-organized gang took the families of two key Northern Bank employees hostage and forced them to clear out the bank's central vault.

Since then, money-laundering authorities across Europe have been keeping an eye out for any large transactions involving British currency, particularly any bearing Northern Bank designs. About two-thirds of the money stolen was new Northern Bank notes.

The Irish detective told the AP that investigators fear that some of the Northern Bank cash already may have been laundered in Bulgaria and Libya — the latter country a past source for most of the IRA's weapons.