Bank recoups ‘cash in the knickers’

IT WAS almost the perfect crime: wads of notes systematically plundered from the Bank of England in an employee’s underwear.

The ingenious theft, for which the alleged chief protagonists avoided a criminal trial, and never paid back a penny, inspired an ITV drama starring Caroline Quentin, Hot Money, and a Hollywood remake, Mad Money, featuring Diane Keaton and Katie Holmes. But more than 25 years later, the Bank has finally recovered its money.

The minutes of a meeting of its Court of Directors, published this week, reveal that “following a property sale” the Bank had received “substantially all of the funds stolen in 1992” by staff working at its incineration plant in Debden, Essex.

The minutes add: “Court agreed that it would be right now to draw a line.”

The Bank had sued three couples for the return of around £600,000 in

1994. The money, worth around £1.5million today, was stolen from the plant over a period of four years.

Three couples held responsible were said to have lived “the life of Riley” on the proceeds, “wildly above any conceivable legitimate means”. They were only caught when Peter Gibson, the husband of “prime mover” Christine Gibson, walked into the Ilford branch of an insurance society in 1992 and emptied £100,000 in cash from a carrier bag. The police were duly alerted.

But with no specific evidence and no one willing to talk to the police, the CPS was unable to pursue a prosecution.

The Bank of England sued the Gibsons and two other former employees and their spouses for the return of the money, with interest, seeking damages for breach of contract.

With little else to go on, it cited their high living as evidence of culpability. The court heard that the old notes were kept in cages secured by two padlocks.

Mrs Gibson, then 44, a group leader at the plant, had the key for one lock and someone else had the key for the other. But Mrs Gibson was sometimes able to switch keys, and access both.

She and her colleagues, Michael Nairne, then 39, and Kenneth Longman, would remove some cash while another employee, Kevin Winwright, who was jailed for a year after he admitted stealing £170,000, distracted guards. Judge Norman Rudd, sitting at the High Court, declared in 1994 that the employees had stolen from the Bank of England and ordered each couple to repay a share as well as the costs of the case but the cash was seemingly not forthcoming.

The Bank of England was unable to provide any further details about the sale of the property referred to in the minutes.