Record Dublin robbery

Two men were charged 3 March in connection with 27 February bank robbery, the largest of its kind in the history of the Irish republic, in which Dublin gangsters forced a bank employee to steal millions from Bank of Ireland on College Green, or risk having his family executed.

The armed gang broke into the family home of his partner in County Kildare on 28 February night, beating her up before kidnapping her family. The next morning the traumatised 24 year old banker was forced to drive to the bank where, it is now understood, he was granted access to the high security vaults by management who decided not to immediately inform the police.

He later drove northside to Clontarf where the money was handed over to the gang; his family was then released in Ashbourne, a town north of the capital.

As soon as the police became aware of the robbery they increased their surveillance of a number of Dublin gang members regarded as sophisticated enough to carry out the kidnap robbery, later stopping a car on the Navan Road which turned out to contain