Gang fled by sewer drive

Press, 23 July 1976, Page 5

Gang fled by sewer drive

NZPA-Reuter Nice' The burglars who tunnelled into a bank vault and stole an estimated SNZIO.6M in cash and valuables escaped by an underground road along the sewers of Nice, the French police have said. Revising first reports of what is being called the “caper of the century.’’ the police said guards were on duty at the Societe Generale bank branch on Saturday and Sunday, but they heard nothing suspicious. The burglars dug a 25-ioot tunnel into the bank’s main vault, which was not protected by an alarm. Working at their leisure during the week-end, they munched bread and sipped wine while thev rifled 400 of the bank’s 4000 safe-deposit boxes. In one of the boxes, the thieves found nude photo-

graphs of a woman The; police discovered the pin-ups i taped to the steel walls of the vault. A police official said the burglars drove a van along the underground banks of the Paillon River—over which Nice is built—from the tunnel. “We are quite certain they drove a pick-up van almost a kilometre along the underground road used by the Sanitation Department.” he said. I “We also found a rubber (boat, but we believe that (they had it as a reserve! (escape means and did not] use it.”

The thieves were able to drive the van to within a kilometre of the site where they began their tunnel. They had to walk the rest of the way.