Angry clients besiege robbed bank

Press, 22 July 1976, Page 8

Angry clients besiege robbed bank

NZPA-Reuter Nice Hundreds of agitated clients have besieged a bank in Nice to find out whether they were among the victims of the biggest robbery in history, Agence FrancePresse reported. At least 50 million francs (SNZIO.6m) was spirited away from the bank during a week-end operation carried out with military precision by a gang who got clean away.

The thieves dug a tunnel eight metres long into the strong-room of the bank, where they rifled 200 deposit boxes containing money, securities, jewels, and gold.

Behind them the thieves left a note saying “No shots, no violence, no hatred” and bearing the International peace sign.

The gang worked undisturbed all week-end in an operation that makes the British “Great Train Robbery” look like a dairy holdup. Bank officials discovered the robbery only late on Monday morning. Before leaving the way they got in, the gang had welded the vault door shut from the inside.

The police, who confessed themselves astonished by the skill displayed, believe the gang began the operation on Friday night. The robbers, probably at least half a dozen, male their way hundreds of metres through the sewers to beneath the bank, a branch of the State-owned Societe Generale, in the heart of this fashionable resort.

They then dug a skilfullyconstructed tunnel, cementing the walls as they progressed, through to the bank foundations. After bursting their way through the floor of the vault, they set themselves up for the'week-end, putting girlie pictures on the wall and opening bottles of wine. The bank was unguar>‘ J all through the week-end, but the police said they could not understand how tl.v thieves did not set off the highly-sophisticated alarm system. One theory was that they had help from inside the bank in settirg up the operations, which probably took weeks to prepare. They opened the coffers with acetylene cutting tor-

ches, helping themselves to the contents, but spurning some jewellery they clearly thought not valuable enough. When the police finally got into the vault, all they found were the tools, empty wine bottles, a pair of gloves, the discarded jewellery, and a silver bowl the thieves had used as a urinal. There was no trace in the vault, nor in the sewers, of the tons of earth that I been dug out in the tunnelling. Only the organised pillaging of the Second World War compares with the scale of the Nice operation. The “Great Train Robbery” in Britain in 1963 netted its operators 2m, and the biggest cash haul in the United States was in 1962, when a gang robbed a U.S. Mail truck and got away with SUSI.Sm.

When the bank opened its doors on Monday morning, hundreds of clients were already waiting in the street, clamouring to know f they were among the victims. An old lady fainted when she was told her coffer had been cleaned out. and some of the crowd shouted: “Kill the manager.”