Orde press conference: The PSNI Chief Constable, Mr Hugh Orde, has blamed the IRA for the Northern Bank robbery. It was also disclosed at his Belfast press conference yesterday that the estimated haul from the robbery has risen from £22 million to £26.5 million.
Of the estimated £26.5 million stolen, £22 million was in Northern Bank notes, according to the bank. But because the bank is to withdraw all its notes and issue redesigned notes, those will now be worthless, said Mr Orde. The alleged IRA gang has so far escaped however with £4.5 million in other usable sterling notes, the chief constable conceded.
After meeting the chairman and deputy chairman of the Policing Board, Sir Desmond Rea and Mr Denis Bradley, the chief constable formally named the IRA as the organisation responsible for one of the biggest robberies in British and Irish history.
"On the basis of the investigating work we have done to date, the evidence we have collected, the information we have collected, the exhibits we have collected, and putting that all together and working through it, is that in my opinion the Provisional IRA were responsible for this crime, and all main lines of inquiry currently undertaken are in that direction," he said.
Mr Orde said he was naming the IRA as the organisation responsible because in the face of so much speculation and so many demands for attribution, which were impeding the investigation, it now made "operational sense" to take this line.
"The immense amount of interest in who did it is getting in the way of us carrying out the investigation. It is becoming the event rather than dealing with the crime, and we need to move on and focus on dealing with the crime, which we intend to do."
While he was conscious of the political implications in blaming the IRA, Mr Orde said: "But those are for others to deal with, they are not for me to comment on and I have no intention of commenting on them," he said.
When asked was it individuals or the central IRA organisation that was behind the crime, Mr Orde said: "We are confident that this crime was committed by the Provisional IRA. You can read into that anything you want, that is all I am prepared to say on who committed the crime." Mr Orde said he was not prepared to give any detail about his investigation that could compromise the inquiry or intelligence sources.
"The notion that some people put forward that we did not have any intelligence is a false one. We have substantial intelligence, we are acting on it, we have analysed it, we have added to it other things that we have done during the inquiry and we have come to the conclusion I have come to today," he said.
His assessment was not made under any political or other pressure, added Mr Orde.
Asked was it credible that Mr Gerry Adams and Mr Martin McGuinness did not know about the crime, Mr Orde said that was a matter that should be addressed to the two Sinn Féin politicians.
He said the robbery was not a "victimless" crime. "Two families were kidnapped, they were abducted; they were threatened with death if they did not comply with the kidnappers' instructions. They were put through a great deal of trauma . . .This was a violent and brutal crime, it was not a Robin Hood effort," he said.
He said the Northern Bank cash notes element of the haul would not be worth anything after the money was formally withdrawn and new and different bank notes issued.
"In essence, this large robbery has become the largest theft of waste paper in the living history of Northern Ireland," although later in the press conference he conceded that about £4.5 million of the robbery, all in other sterling notes, were usable.
He paid tribute to the investigating team of over 45 detectives under the overall control of assistant chief constable Mr Sam Kinkaid and the operational control of Det Supt Andy Sproule. "I have total confidence in the investigation," he said. Mr Orde added that there were no guarantees that the alleged IRA gang would be caught.
Implicitly referring to previous occasions when RUC Special Branch and other intelligence agencies did not always share information with other police departments, he stressed that Supt Sproule had access to "every single scrap of intelligence in relation to this inquiry; nothing has been held back from the senior investigating officer".
Mr Orde appealed for public support in tracking the robbers.