TWO MEN were due to appear before Dublin District Court this morning to face charges relating to the €7.6 million kidnap robbery of the Bank of Ireland last Friday.
The suspects were among seven people arrested on the M50 and in Phibsboro, Dublin, in the hours following the robbery after almost €2 million was found in a car.
The charges of handling stolen money and money laundering were put to the two men last night and they were detained in Garda custody overnight ahead of their court appearance this morning. Two other suspects were released without charge last night, while three others still being held for questioning last night were due to be released in the early hours of this morning.
Gardaí say a large-scale investigation into the alleged role of the six in the robbery, the biggest in the history of the State, will continue for some time. Other suspects who have not yet been arrested have also been identified in recent days. The seven arrested are originally from Dublin’s north inner city. While most of them still reside in the area, at least two live in Phibsboro and one is currently living in Longford.
One of the suspects was arrested in a car after a chase on the M50 on Friday night. Almost all of the estimated €1.8 million recovered so far was found in two bags in his vehicle when it was stopped and searched near Castleknock. Two other people, a 36-year-old man and 32-year-old woman, were arrested at a house in Great Western Villas, Phibsboro, just after the money was found on the M50.
Another man in his 20s was arrested on the street near the house, and three other men in their 20s were arrested in a car in the vicinity. One of those arrested is a close associate of a major figure in Irish organised crime.
The Irish Times understands that immediately after news of the raid broke last Friday morning, gardaí increased their surveillance of a number of Dublin gang members regarded as sophisticated enough to carry out the kidnap robbery. Those targeted were already under surveillance because of their suspected involvement in large-scale drug trafficking and gun crime.
During the course of that intensified operation on Friday afternoon, intelligence quickly emerged that led gardaí to a house at Great Western Villas. They put a covert surveillance operation in place around the area which resulted in them following the car the money was found in.
The follow-up arrests also flowed from the intelligence. Friday’s operation was led by the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation and its Organised Crime Unit.
Gardaí have carried out a major forensic examination of the house at Great Western Villas and of the seized money in the hope of establishing forensic links between those arrested and the cash.
Members of the Garda Technical Bureau have also carried out a major forensic examination of the house in Kilteel, Co Kildare, where the six-man armed gang took hostage Shane Travers, a vaults worker at the Bank of Ireland, College Green, along with his girlfriend and her mother and five-year-old nephew.
The two women and the boy were tied up and held hostage while Mr Travers was forced to steal the money from the bank.