Digging in
Police in Sao Paulo have prevented the world’s biggest bank robbery after discovering a 500-metre tunnel, complete with lighting, ventilation and rail tracks, leading from a rented house to the vaults of the Bank of Brazil.
BRAZIL: Police in Sao Paulo have prevented the world’s biggest bank robbery after discovering a 500-metre tunnel, complete with lighting, ventilation and rail tracks, leading from a rented house to the vaults of the Bank of Brazil.
The thieves hoped to steal up to US$315 million (NZ$443M), police said, and had planned to carry out the raid this weekend. Several bulletproof cars, suspected of having been prepared as getaway vehicles, have been impounded.
‘‘It would have been the world’s biggest heist,’’ said Fabio Pinheiro Lopes, the police chief of Brazil’s financial capital.
The gang is understood to have spent at least US$983,000 (NZ$1.38M) to fund the construction of the tunnel and other logistics. Among those arrested is a woman who used a false name to rent the house where the tunnel began.
Police say the gang’s leader was Alceu Ceu Gomes Nogueira, 35. He is also suspected of being involved in an attack on cash deposits in Paraguay in April, when nearly US$13M (NZ$18.5M) was stolen and a police officer was killed.
The tunnel was high enough for a person to stand inside, and supported with metal and wooden beams. Frozen food to provide for a large team of labourers was also discovered. Suspicions were aroused when police in the run-down north of the city were alerted to the construction of an unusually luxurious house. It turned out to be the gang’s temporary headquarters. Police are investigating whether a notorious Sao Paulo drug cartel, the PCC, was involved. - The Times