Bank raiders are in international company of thieves

Infamous robberies: The £20 million (€29 million) Northern Bank robbery in Belfast on Monday was the biggest heist ever in Ireland and one of the biggest robberies ever carried out anywhere in recent years.

Perhaps the most infamous raid in modern history was the great train robbery in Britain in August 1963, when Ronnie Biggs and other gang members made off with £2.7 million, worth around €58 million in today's prices.

The money was on a train en route from Glasgow to London when it was ambushed. The driver of the train was hit over the head.

The greatest ever robbery, in monetary terms, took place at the German Reichsbank following the fall of the Nazi regime in 1945. More than $2.5 billion (€1.9 billion) in gold, currency and jewels hoarded by the Nazis vanished. No one has ever been caught for the theft.

More recently, during the collapse of Saddam Hussein's regime, his son, Qusay, since killed, was said to have personally removed €890 million in euro and dollar bills from Iraq's Central Bank.

The bills were said to have been loaded on to three tractor-trailers.

In the Republic, the biggest raid in recent times was the armed robbery of a security depot at Clonshaugh, Dublin, in January 1996, when in excess of £3 million was taken. A Dublin based gang suspected of the robbery is also believed to have stolen £1.7 million from a security van in Marino in January 1997.

In February 2003 some €100 million worth of diamonds was taken in a robbery in Antwerp, Belgium. The raid is thought to have been carried out by a gang of Italian raiders, known as The School of Turin. They bypassed cameras, bars and reinforced doors to gain entry to the vaults. They emptied 123 of 160 vaults.

In July 1987 the Knightsbridge safety deposit centre, London, was the scene of a £60 million robbery. Property was stolen from 113 of 126 boxes and the managing director was among those charged a month after the raid.

In August 1994, gems worth £30 million were taken from the Carlton Hotel in Cannes. Three men firing blank bullets struck just as the hotel's shop was closing.

In 1983 London's Heathrow Airport was the scene of a robbery worth £26 million at the time. A gang of six armed and masked thieves raided the Brinks warehouses at the airport on the morning of November 26th. They removed a haul of 6,800 bars of gold and platinum along with travellers cheques. Most of the gang was later imprisoned.

Last May Heathrow once again became the location for a gang of robbers looking to strike it big. However, when gang members raided the Swissport Cargo Warehouse around 100 police lay in wait and prevented the theft of the estimated £80 million (€115 million) of gold bullion and cash being stored at the premises.

According to the Guinness Book of Records the world's biggest bank robbery happened in Beirut, Lebanon in January 1976, when guerrillas stole cash, gold, stock certificates and jewellery worth up to £22 million in 1976 prices from the vaults of the British Bank of the Middle East.

(Additional reporting PA)