The PSNI officer charged with catching the Northern Bank robbers and recovering over £22 million in stolen cash has denied that police "botched" an opportunity to apprehend the gang.
Det Supt Andy Sproule said last night his 45-member investigating team were working "around the clock" to apprehend the gang that carried out Monday night's raid. While he confirmed that police officers were only three minutes away from detecting the robbers as they finished loading a van with millions of pounds in cash, he denied that the police bungled a chance to arrest the gang.
Last night police released CCTV footage of the white Ford box-type van driving around the City Hall area of central Belfast close to the Northern Bank around the time of the raid.
It was impossible from the footage to see any of the gang members inside the van. Police are studying hundreds of hours of such footage for further leads.
The gang made two runs in the same white van with their haul. They began loading the money first at 7 p.m. on Monday, leaving the scene at 7.15 p.m. They returned in the same van, police believe, at 8 p.m. for the second load, leaving again 15 minutes later.
The two journeys to and from the Northern Bank each took 45 minutes in busy evening Christmas-time traffic, which indicates the hauls were either stored in Belfast, or reloaded onto another van to be transported out of the city.
During the second loading operation a couple alerted traffic wardens to suspicious activity at 8.10 p.m. The wardens contacted police. A two-member foot patrol arrived at 8.18 p.m., but the gang had left three minutes earlier.
Police also checked CCTV footage around that time but were unable to observe the raid or the robbers. It wasn't until two or three hours later that the police were properly notified of the robbery.
Asked had the police not botched an opportunity to catch the gang, Det Supt Sproule said: "Officers were at the scene as soon as they possibly could. Unfortunately, they weren't here in time. When officers arrived there was no evidence of a crime. It was not a botched police investigation."
Of the stolen £22 million, about £13 million are new Northern Bank notes whose serial numbers eventually will be available to the PSNI, according to police. However, the Northern Bank has not yet passed on these numbers to police, said Det Supt Sproule.
The robbers would have great difficulty spending or laundering this money. But the remaining £9 million in used Northern Bank and other Northern Ireland notes and foreign currency appear capable of being laundered.
Det Supt Sproule said the PSNI were co-operating closely with gardaí and with police forces in Britain and internationally as part of the efforts to trace the robbers.