Staff had 'anti-kidnapping training' before £26.5m raid
Northern Bank staff in Belfast underwent anti-kidnapping training just weeks before the pre-Christmas £26.5m (€37.9m) robbery there, it was revealed tonight.
As police publicly blamed the IRA for the heist, Chief Executive Don Price also disclosed none of the gang were inside his Belfast HQ when the basement distribution centre was raided.
Not all the money stored in the concrete bunker was taken.
Mr Price, who is now overseeing a mammoth operation to replace all Northern currency, accepted public confidence in his bank had been battered.
But he pledged to have trust in the organisation, which is being taken over by Danish giants Danske, restored within months.
“I don’t imagine it will take years to recover,” Mr Price insisted.
“We have had a shock to the system. We are taking the corrective action available to us in terms of the note issue. While customer confidence in the note circulation will have been dented we have taken the steps to redress that.”
Mr Price denied procedures were lax, but conceded that its strategies had failed.
“The criminals didn’t actually get access to the building,” he said.
“But because of the nature of the terror the two families were put under, clearly our procedures did not operate well.
“Ironically we had trained the staff in that area probably within a month (of the raid). We had a refresher training on kidnap. You can do these things in theory but you don’t know until something happens how people do react.”
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