The Northern Bank Robbery

On the evening of December 20th, 2004, two Northern Bank executives carried out the largest heist in British history…

It was a cold winter’s day in Belfast, Northern Ireland, on Monday 20th December 2004. It was the last few days before Christmas Day, and so the streets were filled with shoppers eager to get last minute presents and other items in preparation for the big day. The Northern Bank Cash Centre on Donegall Square, right in the centre of Belfast, was incredibly busy and with it being Christmas, it had the largest amount of cash than any other time of the year. The staff members who worked at the bank were looking forward to their Christmas break, with only a few days to go before their holidays.

At a little before 6pm, the Assistant Branch Manager, Kevin McMullan told all but one of the members of staff to go home early as a Christmas treat. Once they’d left, Kevin McMullan and the other staff member, Chris Ward, went down to the vault and began to place £50 notes into a large sports bag. They carried it up past the unsuspecting security guards and out onto the busy street.

This is the story of the Northern Bank Robbery.

A day prior - Sunday 19th December 2004 - Chris Ward was at home with his family in Poleglass, on the outskirts of West Belfast. Chris was 24 years old and was a Bank Supervisor at the Northern Bank, one of the four main Irish banks. At just before 10pm, there was a knock at the front door. Chris answered the door and saw a man that he didn’t recognise. This unknown man asked him about tickets for the next Celtic football match, which wasn’t unusual because Chris worked for the club as a secretary and did organise tickets. It was a bitterly cold night, and so Chris invited the man into his house to discuss the tickets. As soon as they stepped through the door, a second man appeared holding a gun. Both men forced Chris to return to the living room, where he and his family were held at gunpoint. The family were then tied up and threatened. Chris believed that they must have been watching the family for some time, due to their knowledge of him and his family. In an interview with BBC Spotlight, Chris said:

“It was just terrifying... even the fact that they knew I was involved in Celtic, they knew where I lived, they knew my family, they knew my family's names - they knew about my brother and his girlfriend."

He was then taken upstairs and told to pack a bag, including his work uniform, which they said he would need for the next day. At the same time, his family were given what has only been described as a Holy picture, so likely one representing Jesus or another Christian figure, and told to swear on it that they weren’t going to cause any trouble.

Leaving his family behind, Chris was taken into a three-door car and placed on the floor of the vehicle.

“So I lay down in this car and the driver pointed a gun at me… As soon as I seen the gun, my head just turned towards the seat, because I panicked."

They explained they were going to be driving for around 45 minutes and that he should remain calm. Chris began to wonder if this was related to his job at the Northern Bank, and after he saw a sign for Loughinisland, he suspected he was being taken to a bank colleague’s home.

At the same time as the men entered Chris Ward’s home, around 30 miles away and just outside of Belfast, Assistant Branch Manager Kevin McMullan was sitting and watching television with his wife, Karen. There was a knock at the door, and Karen went to answer it. Standing there were two men dressed as police officers, who told her that a member of her family had been in a serious accident. Shocked, Karen let them in and took them to Kevin, but something about them made him suspicious and he questioned them. They pulled a gun on him and told them both to ‘cooperate or die’. Their hands were tied behind their backs, and Karen was forced into a boiler suit and a hood placed over her head. She was then taken out into a vehicle, while Kevin watched on helplessly. In a statement made by Kevin in 2008, he stated:

“They said they would shoot her in the head and used the phrase that was used repeatedly through the night, that, ’we will damage her beyond repair’”.

Chris Ward’s suspicion about being taken to a colleague’s house turned out to be correct; he was taken to Kevin McMullan’s house. They were placed onto a sofa together at gunpoint, and Chris said that they were threatened and that he was kicked numerous times by one of the gang members. The two men worked together but didn’t know each other well due to Kevin being a higher up executive. They were both interrogated about their roles in the bank and other information for several hours, including its layout, staff arrangements and what security it had. However, it turned out that the gang members knew all of this information beforehand and were merely double checking that their knowledge was up to date.

Once the interrogations were over, the two men were told to get some sleep due to the next day ‘being a busy one’, and they were given mobile phones so that they would be in constant contact with the gang members.

The gang left the two men at around 6:30am and told that they’d be in touch via the mobile phones. According to Kevin McMullan, the two men "spoke and we said... we are going to do whatever we have to do here to make sure Chris’ family and Karen are safe."

Their shifts were due to start at midday. Kevin dropped Chris off away from the bank so that they arrived into work separately and avoid arousing suspicion. Once they got into work, they started their work day off as normal so that their colleagues didn’t suspect anything. According to Chris Ward:

"You had to act as if nothing was wrong... it was very difficult to do. But you knew in the back of your head that you had to do it - that you couldn't tell anybody."

Throughout the day, both men were contacted by members of the gang to check in, being asked to make sure that everything was in order, and were given instructions of what to do once the plan was in motion. A few hours into the work day, Kevin was told to make up an excuse to get the other bank staff to leave three hours early. The staff assumed it was a Christmas treat.

“I told them there had been a problem with the balance and myself and Chris were going to have to do a full note count. I told them that they were dismissed and everyone could go home. It didn't take them very long to go – I think they were happy enough to get away."

It was just after 6pm when everyone else left. Once they were gone, Kevin and Chris had to phone the gang and tell them that they were ready to start. The men were told to go down to the bank vault and carry out a dummy run of the money to test the bank’s security. They had to fill a sports bag with as many £50 notes as they could, which totalled approximately £1 million. There were two security guards on duty that evening, but Chris was able to carry the bag through both security doors without arousing suspicion. A short way from the bank, a man in a baseball cap was waiting for Chris. The man took the bag before explaining that Chris had to return to the bank where they would receive further instructions.

With the dummy run a success, Chris and Kevin were tasked with carrying out the real robbery. They were instructed to get 24 crates and fill them with £20 and £50 notes. They then had to load the crates onto trolleys and push them to the lift and up to a loading bay. The loading bay was used by Securicore, a security company, to deliver and collect the cash that was then sent to and from the bank's branches. To avoid suspicion, Kevin told the security guards that they were doing a clean out and that they would be taking a large amount of rubbish up to the loading bay, where a van would be waiting to dispose of it. The men used broken furniture to cover the crates to further solidify their story.

It took several runs to bring up all of the crates, and the security team had to buzz them up each time. The two men then waited outside the loading bay for the van to arrive, where they then helped the driver load the crates into the van at around 8:30pm. After this, they then had to do the same again with the rest of the money. Chris and Kevin were concerned that the security guards would become suspicious due to the large amount of crates, and they were worried for their families’ safety if they were caught. But security actually notified the men when the van had returned, so they were able to carry the other crates up to the loading bay with no issues.

They were instructed to return to the vault to clean up, lock everything and get rid of any evidence of the robbery. They were finally done at just after 10pm, in which they were told to leave the bank and return to Chris Ward’s house, although some sources state that they were dropped off outside Belfast and made to find their own way home. After being held hostage for over 24 hours, Chris’ family was released unharmed, but Kevin’s wife wasn’t in the house. It was later learned that Karen had been blindfolded and taken to Drumkeeragh Forest near their home for the full 24 hours she was held hostage. Her car had been burned out and she had to walk barefoot to a nearby home to find help. The people there contacted authorities, and she was taken to the hospital.

At 11:45pm, once Chris Ward knew that his family was safe, he contacted the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) and told them what had happened. The PSNI’s Crime Operations department was immediately called in to assist with the investigation.

As early as midnight, rumours in Belfast were starting to circulate regarding a large scale bank robbery. The morning after, The Belfast Telegraph established that a robbery had taken place that totalled tens of millions of pounds from the Northern Bank. According to the Belfast Telegraph, a police spokesman stated:

“Detectives are investigating the removal of a substantial amount of cash from a bank in the Belfast area; there are no further details at this moment."

As a result of the media attention, a Northern Bank spokesman insisted that the banks were running as normal and that their customers would not be affected by the robbery.

A huge police investigation started, although the PSNI faced criticism early on that such a large scale raid could happen and that they had no knowledge of it. They denied that the investigation was botched. The police were able to track that some of the money had gone south of the border, as early as 48 hours after the robbery. The Irish Garda, the police for the Republic of Ireland, raided two homes in Dublin with the hopes that some of the money would be recovered but none was found. The PSNI also conducted numerous interviews with Chris and Kevin to try and gain as much information as possible. They had thousands of hours of CCTV evidence in and around the bank, but the quality was poor and didn’t help them with their investigation. There was also no CCTV in the loading bay area. Due to the gang members never stepping foot inside the bank, the police couldn’t rely on forensic evidence either.

With a lack of evidence, the police began to suspect the Irish Republican Army, known as the IRA, of being involved. The IRA immediately denied their involvement. With there being significant peace talks between the government and IRA taking place at the same time, this accusation threatened to destabilise progress made by these meetings. The reason behind these peace talks was a result of decades of violence in Ireland. For some backstory, let's rewind a bit.

In April 1916, approximately 1,200 Irish Republicans launched the Easter Rising against the British control of Ireland and issued a written proclamation calling for an Irish Republic and that, quote, "the right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland". The uprising was crushed after seven days of fighting between the Irish Republican Army and the British army, which resulted in 485 deaths and over 2,200 people injured, most of which being civilians. Despite this, popularity for an independent Ireland began to increase, and the Republican Party Sinn Féin won a landslide victory in the December 1918 election. This led to them creating a breakaway government in January 1919 called Dáil Éireann and declaring Irish independence.

By September of that year, the British government outlawed both Dáil Éireann and Sinn Féin, which increased rising tensions. The IRA began attacking the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) and British Army patrols by attacking their barracks. The British government responded by sending more troops to bolster the numbers of the RIC by around 10,000. Known as Black and Tans, they were mostly made up of former British soldiers from Word War 1. However, they were infamous for their brutality and lacking discipline. They would often attack and kill civilians, in particular republicans, as revenge for IRA attacks. Businesses and homes were also burned down.

By mid-1920, republicans had won control of most county councils, undermining British authority in most of the south and west of Ireland. The British government passed the Restoration of Order in Ireland Act 1920 in August, which allowed the courts to increase the number of convictions of the IRA by using courts martial rather than trial by jury in areas where the rebels were particularly prevalent.

By December 1920, approximately 300 people had been killed as a result of the conflict, but this escalated on the 21st November 1920. Known as Bloody Sunday, the IRA assassinated 14 British intelligence operatives that were living in Dublin. In retaliation, members of the RIC opened fire on a crowd at a Gaelic football match in Croke Park, killing 14 civilians and wounding at least 60 others. In the evening, the two higher up IRA members, Dick McKee and Peadar Clancy, that had helped plan the assassinations were beaten and killed in Dublin Castle. A civilian named Conor Clune, who happened to have been caught with the others, was also killed. Their bodies showed signs of torture, although those responsible said that they were killed as a result of an escape attempt.

As a result of Bloody Sunday, the Irish people turned against the British authorities. Several children were among those killed at the football match, which made international headlines and caused uproar throughout the world.

In May 1921, Ireland was separated into two under British law by the Government of Ireland Act, creating Southern Ireland and Northern Ireland. By July of that year, a ceasefire was called between the two sides. Post-ceasefire talks took place, which led to the Anglo-Irish Treaty being signed on the 6th December 1921. This treaty ended British rule of Ireland, and instead the Irish Free State was created. The treaty caused an Irish Civil War with one side being pro-treaty and the other opposing it. Those that opposed the treaty were made up of the IRA, who believed that it went against the Irish Republic that had been proclaimed during the Easter Rising. After considerable violence, and hundreds of deaths, the pro-treaty side won out due to having access to weapons from the British government. The Northern Ireland parliament chose to opt out of the Irish Free State in 1922, which further cemented the partition of Ireland. Northern Ireland now remained with the United Kingdom and under British authority, whereas Southern Ireland was now its own dominion.

A small remnant of the IRA continued after the Irish Civil War, which would have ramifications in later years. Their goal was to overthrow both Northern and Southern Irish governments and unify Ireland, using whatever means they deemed necessary – often violent ones. Although their numbers were no longer large enough to be considered a huge threat, they tried to infiltrate Irish politics with little success.

After war was declared at the start of World War 2, the IRA bombed England and stole ammunitions to try to weaken the British, including bombing Coventry in the West Midlands on the 25th August 1939. 5 people were killed and 70 people were injured. They also tried to join forces with Germany by offering to provide them with information on the British forces if they sent resources such as radios and weapons in return. A member of the German Military Intelligence, Gunther Schuetz, was parachuted in and a deal was struck, with the IRA intending to send him back to Germany with their requests. An IRA courier was intercepted on a train, however, and Schuetz and those with him were arrested hours before their ship was due to set sail. Several IRA members were executed or arrested throughout WW2, and by the end of the war, their numbers were greatly reduced.

The IRA continued to work towards their goal of a unified Ireland by attempting to build a base politically by working alongside Sinn Fein. In the 60s, after a series of failed attempts, the IRA began to split apart. On one side was the traditionalist IRA members who wanted the party to remain the same, whereas others wanted it to have a more Marxist viewpoint and be more engaged with politics. This split became more pronounced when tensions between Catholics and Protestants began to worsen. Protestants were often given preferential treatment, and a lot of people in authority positions such as the police were all Protestants.

In 1966, Protestants felt threatened after the 50 year celebration of the Easter Rising due to the concern that it would kick start a new IRA campaign of attacks, and so some formed a group called the Ulster Volunteer Force, who attacked and killed 3 people, 2 of whom were Catholics. This led to riots and protests breaking out throughout Ireland, with several people dying on both sides. The IRA were historically known for supporting and protecting the Catholics, but the new leadership didn’t want to get involved in the violence due to their political ambitions. The traditionalist members of the IRA were critical of the leadership for this decision, and they split off and created their own party known as the Provisional IRA in 1969. The Provisional IRA, often called Provos, issued their first public statement on 28th December 1969, which read:

“We declare our allegiance to the 32 county Irish republic, proclaimed at Easter 1916, established by the first Dáil Éireann in 1919, overthrown by force of arms in 1922 and suppressed to this day by the existing British-imposed six-county and twenty-six-county partition states.”

This is when the conflict between the nationalists, often Roman Catholic, and the unionists, often Protestant, truly began and would continue for another 30 years.

Over the next three decades, the Provisional IRA and British Army were at war. In 1970, Provos came up with a three stage plan: defend the nationalist areas, a combination of defence and retaliatory attacks and then launching a guerrilla campaign against the British army. Provos planted bombs throughout Ireland, mostly in businesses, with there being around 150 explosions by the end of 1970. On August 9th 1971, internment without trial was introduced throughout Northern Ireland, which led to more protests by Roman Catholics because the internments were often one-sided. These protests ended up escalating to riots, with 22 people killed including 7 civilians by the British army, and several thousand people had to leave their homes in Belfast due to the increasing violence.

One of the bloodiest events during the 1970s was the Bogside Massacre on the 30th January 1972 in Bogside, Derry, Northern Ireland. British soldiers shot 26 unarmed civilians that were protesting the internment without trial law. 13 people died, all of which were Catholic. It increased hostilities even more and allowed the Provisional IRA to gain further support.

There was a temporary ceasefire called in June 1972 and peace talks started, but they broke down when the British government refused to accept the IRA’s demands of removing the British army from Ireland and releasing all republican prisoners. The ceasefire ended in July, and the IRA concentrated their efforts on attacking Britain. They bombed London in 1973, and by the end of the year 45 people in England were killed as a result of further bombings. The fighting continued into the 1980s, although the IRA's focus on bombing civilians had lessened and instead focussed on military targets, when its political side Sinn Fein began to negotiate an end to the fighting. Then-leader Gerry Adams conducted talks with the leader of the labour party in Northern Ireland and government officials, although Adams believed that it would be a long process that may take up to 20 years to sort out. In October 1984, Provos attempted to assassinate the Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher by bombing the Brighton hotel. 5 Conservative party members were killed, and Thatcher only narrowly avoided death.

In the early 90s, the Provisional IRA had escalated their attacks in England, with 15 bombs being planted in 1990 going up to 57 in 1992. As was often the case with their bombings, warnings were given to authorities 30 minutes before the attacks. On 31st August 1994, a ceasefire was called by Provos. However, this broke down when the IRA wanted Sinn Fein to be allowed to join in with the peace talks, and the British government demanded that the IRA be disarmed before they’d allow Sinn Fein into the talks. Provos called off its ceasefire with the bombing of London Docklands on the 9th February 1996. The IRA sent warnings 90 minutes before the attack, but they weren’t able to fully evacuate the area, leading to 2 people dying and over a hundred people being injured. Further attacks happened, including Manchester in June 1996, where over 200 people were injured. It was considered the largest bomb attack in Britain since World War 2.

Another ceasefire was called in July 1997, and Sinn Fein joined the peace talks in September. These talks led to the Good Friday Agreement of 1998. This agreement covered various areas, such as relations between Britain and Ireland. One of the key parts was the acceptance that a large percentage of Northern Ireland wished to remain in the United Kingdom, but that there were people in the country that wanted to unify Ireland. Both points of view were considered to be valid. The British government also agreed to replace the Government of Ireland Act of 1920 and release prisoners. Northern Ireland would be self-governed with an assembly made up of 108 elected officials.

Originally Provos disagreed with the Good Friday Agreement, but Sinn Fein leaders said that they should back it so that the fighting would stop for good. In accordance with the agreement, all paramilitary groups, including the IRA, would have to fully disarm by May 2000. This was monitored by the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning, which was created specifically to oversee this process. The IRA started this process in October 2001, and their armed campaign was officially ended on the 28th July 2005, only 8 months after the Northern Bank Robbery.

The fighting between 1969 and 1998 are often called The Troubles, and they caused approximately 3600 people to lose their lives and over 45000 to be injured. This was a brief history for a very complex issue that spanned almost a hundred years, but it helps to showcase how important the peace talks of 2004 were and how controversial it was to blame the Provisional IRA for the robbery. It caused many people to fear that The Troubles would start all over again, and both the Police Service of Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland’s Garda knew that they had to tread carefully to avoid hurting the peace talks. Thankfully these talks continued on. And in fact, some believe that the robbery helped to pave the way for the future agreements between the government and the IRA, including the IRA agreeing to dispose of all of its weapons in July 2005. In an article published in the Irish Central by Dan Haverty in January 2020, they state that the money gained from the Northern Bank robbery enabled the IRA to fund themselves without needing to use guerrilla tactics, which in turn led to them agreeing to disarm. They believed the money helped create a pension fund of sorts for the loyalists.

This theory of a pension fund was popular in the months after the robbery as well. On the 29th December 2004, the media reported that investigators looking into the raid believed that the robbery was to help fund the retirement of the IRA loyalists. This idea was never proven, but it remained a popular motive.

A couple of weeks after the raid on the bank, on the 7th January 2005, the CEO of Northern Bank, Don Price, spoke at a press conference. He reiterated that he would not be resigning, telling reporters:

"I have done nothing wrong. We are the victims in this. We are not the ones responsible for the raid."

Price and his associates would also confirm just how much money had been taken from the cash centre: £26.5 million (approximately £40 million in today’s money). To help ensure that the perpetrators could not use the stolen money, Mr Price stated that they would be withdrawing almost of its notes, except for £5 notes, and would be replacing them with notes of different colours. Unlike in England where the Bank of England releases all of the notes and every bank issues the same ones, the 4 major banks in Ireland – Bank of Ireland, Ulster Bank, Danske Bank (formally known as Northern Bank) and Allied Irish Banks – print their own notes. Because of this, it was only Northern Bank notes that were affected by the raid and so were easy to replace. On this, Mr. Price stated:

"To my knowledge this is the first time this has been done. To minimise the impact on our customers, we are going to take the notes out of circulation ourselves. So when we bring notes back into the bank, we will take the old notes out of circulation and we will replace them with the new ones."

They had the serial numbers for approximately £16.5 million of the notes, with the rest being impossible to trace due to them being mixed notes from other banks. Bank staff would be taking note of the serial numbers of the money coming into the banks to be swapped for the new notes, and the police would be notified if any of the stolen money’s serial numbers appeared. According to Don Price, there were around £300 million of their notes in circulation and that it would cost them £5 million to replace them all. The new notes would have the same design but be different colours with a new logo and different prefix that started the serial numbers.

At the same press conference, the Chief Constable of the PSNI, Hugh Orde, issued a statement confirming that they considered the IRA to be the primary suspects in the robbery. This caused huge rifts through British and Irish politics, with politicians believing the political party Sinn Fein to be involved. Sinn Féin is the largest Irish republican political party and has ties to the IRA that continue to this day, although Sinn Fein leadership deny this. In response to the accusation, Sinn Féin denied all knowledge of the robbery, but disputes between them and the other Irish political parties continued to worsen. The Democratic Unionist Party called for the four Sinn Fein Members of Parliament (MPs) to have their allowances and privileges removed.

On the 16th January, a Sinn Fein politician, Martin McGuinness, once again denied their involvement and said that he believed that the IRA did not carry out the robbery.

“If the IRA had been involved... there would have been a defining moment in Sinn Fein's leadership's work with the IRA. It would have been totally and absolutely unacceptable to me… I don't see how it could have been in the interests of the IRA, who have made such a powerful contribution to the peace process going way back to their cessation in 1994, to be involved in such a risky operation, which would have undermined the republican contribution to a vitally important peace process."

On the 18th January, the Northern Bank announced that it would be moving the 40 staff members who worked at the cash centre to other departments or branches in the network. They also stated that it had nothing to do with confidential information that was given to the gang responsible for the robbery. According to the BBC, a letter was sent to the staff saying that their personal security was one of its main priorities. The bank didn’t say when the moves were taking place but that it would be as soon as operationally possible.

No new information was given on the robbery until February 10th, when it was released to the media that a property in County Tyrone, Northern Ireland, was searched in connection with the robbery. Over the course of a two day operation, the PSNI checked the home of two brothers, Michael and Liam Donnelly. It was never revealed why the property was searched, and nothing was found. Michael’s son, Damien said,

"With the biggest robbery in history, to be involved in inquiries to do with that is just beyond us. The whole of the Donnelly family has absolutely nothing to do with terrorism or bank robberies - it's not in our nature. We are out for an honest day's work for an honest day's pay."

Also on the 10th February, the Independent Monitoring Commission released its report on the Northern Bank Robbery. In it, they stated that the Provisional IRA were not only responsible for the Northern Bank robbery but also various other robberies leading up to the bank raid, such as the abduction of people and stealing of goods from an shop in Strabane, 80 miles away from Belfast, on the 26th September and the robbery of cigarettes with the approximate value of £2 million from a delivery vehicle in Belfast on 2nd October. The report concluded that this was done to help the IRA gain a large amount of funds and resources and that the IRA leadership would have known about the robbery and likely authorised it. Although they stated that Sinn Fein may well have not known about the robbery, they needed to “bear its responsibility for the continuation by PIRA of illegal paramilitary activity and had to recognise the implications of being in this position” and that financial sanctions should be put on the party.

In response, Sinn Fein argued that the Independent Monitoring Commission was not independent and that the inclusion of an Alliance Party leader proved this. The British government responded by saying it would ask MPs to vote on the withdrawal of parliamentary allowances of the four Sinn Fein MPs.

On February 17th, there was a breakthrough when the home of a man named Ted Cunningham was searched and approximately £3 million from the bank robbery was found.

Born in 1949, Cunningham lived and worked as a financial advisor in Farran, County Cork, located in the Republic of Ireland and over 270 miles away from the Northern Bank cash centre in Belfast. He was arrested and charged with money laundering, pending a trial which wouldn’t start until 2009. A further seven arrests were made a day later in Cork and Dublin, two of which were members of the Sinn Fein party. In response to this, Sinn Fein released a statement:

“Sinn Fein's position on this robbery is clear. Over the last four weeks we have seen people rush to judgment time and time again. We would urge people to exercise caution on this occasion and allow the truth to come out. Sinn Fein has no further information about these arrests and we will wait to see how events unfold before we comment further”.

All seven people were questioned but eventually released without charge.

On the same day, £50,000 worth of notes were found in the toilets of a PSNI’s recreational club on Newforge Lane in Belfast. Bundled into five separate packages, the notes were confirmed to be from the bank robbery. The police concluded that it was “an elaborate prank aimed at directing attention away from the events elsewhere” and that the culprits may have just been trying to cast suspicion on the police. A member of the Democratic Unionist Party, Ian Paisley Junior, said that he believed that the Republican Party had planted the money. In an interview, he said:

"I think this find by the police is an act of desperation by republicans, an attempt to throw the police off the scent. I think it indicates just how hard the republican movement has been stung by events over the last 48 hours."

In March 2005, the new bank notes were released by Northern Bank into circulation. Anyone with the older notes would have to visit a branch to change them, which would make the majority of the money stolen in the bank robbery dangerous to carry - rending it worthless. Despite this plan, there were no updates on the case until 8 months later, on November 2nd.

On that date, police revealed that 5 men had been arrested in connection with the robbery. Very little information on them was ever released in the media, other than their ages and general locations. Two were from County Tyrone and were 40 and 43 years old respectively; two were in their twenties; and one was in his thirties, having been arrested near Belfast. Their houses were searched, and a number of items were taken away.

The Sinn Fein MP for South Tyrone accused the arrests of being a publicity stunt, telling the press:

“We have seen these kinds of stunts happening before - they swoop in and take things away. They eventually come back in a lot less a heavy glare of publicity, give whatever they had raided back and say there was nothing on there."

Two days later, Dominic McEvoy, aged 23, was charged with the robbery and accused of holding Kevin and Karen McMullan hostage. McEvoy was a builder from Kilcoo in County Down, and his DNA was found on a hat outside of Loughinisland Road, the home of the McMullans.

Also charged was Brian Arthurs, a 40-year-old from Dungannon in County Tyrone. Arthurs was a member of Sinn Fein and had ties with the IRA from a young age. In 1987, his brother Declan was among the IRA unit killed by the SAS, and Arthurs himself had been sentenced to 25 years in 1995 for possessing explosives. He was released early as a result of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998.

The police seemed to be making even more progress when they charged another of the men on the 7th November. Martin McAliskey, a 42-year-old car salesman from Coalisland County Tyrone, was charged with making false statements to investigators. According to the police, the false statements were in relation to a white Ford transit van that was allegedly used in the bank robbery. However, the charges for all three men were later dropped due to a lack of definitive evidence. McEvoy’s DNA was considered too low quality to be used, and there was no evidence that conclusively linked McAliskey’s van to the robbery.

A month later, on 7th December, the PSNI made an arrest that surprised everyone, taking bank staff member and alleged victim, Chris Ward, into custody. His house was searched on several times over, and Chris was held in custody for 8 days – an unprecedented time and normally reserved for terrorists (such as IRA members).

Whilst in custody, Ward was interviewed on multiple occasions but denied any involvement in the robbery. In a statement that was read out at Belfast Magistrates’ Court by Chris’ solicitor, he accused the police of bugging his home in a bid to frame him:

“Police have bugged my house, a holiday in Spain, went through all my phone records, my bank accounts, hounded my friends, even going as far as Australia and have tortured my family in an attempt to frame me with the Northern Bank robbery."

A detective confirmed that a surveillance device was used and had assisted them in their investigation. Chris Ward also said in his statement:

“Police have failed in all of these counts; they have held me longer than the hostage takers who seized me last year. And indeed have held me in a police station for longer than anyone else in the history of the North of Ireland."

The Court was told that there were 4 key areas that made up the case against Chris Ward: his actions on December 18th and 19th; his actions on the day of the raid, December 20th; his original account of what had happened; and a work rota (which listed his duties and responsibilities as it was scheduled).

Chris Ward’s trial was in 2008, and very little happened in the investigation before then. In March 2007, Don Bullman from County Cork, Republic of Ireland, was sentenced to 4 years in prison for being a member of the IRA. He’d been arrested in Dublin two years earlier after being found in possession of a Daz washing powder box that contained over €94,000 (approximately £130,000 in today’s money) which the garda believed was money laundered from the Northern Bank robbery. However, there was no evidence linking him to the robbery, and he was only charged with being in the IRA.

The trial for Chris Ward began on the 9th September 2008 and was held without a jury.

The prosecution’s main piece of evidence against him was, they alleged, that he had intentionally changed the work rota last minute to ensure that he had the key to the bank vault.

Assistant Branch Manager Kevin McMullan testified, giving his recollection of what had unfolded during the Northern Bank robbery. He described Chris’ demeanour when they were first held hostage together:

“He was shaking, having difficulty breathing and just said they have got my mum and dad."

Kevin went on to describe how one of the gang members acted:

"He made it very clear that if anything went wrong with the robbery, that the robbery didn't go according to plan, that if we did anything to try and stop the robbery - that would be the outcome – that they would shoot Karen."

However, by October, the trial had fallen apart. It was determined that the work rota had been changed due to “the result of a chance decision by management” and had not been Chris Ward’s decision. The Prosecution Counsel Gordon Kerr QC, after this came to light said in court,

"Having considered the remaining evidence and the advice of counsel... it has been concluded that it would not be proper to make further submissions."

From this, the Judge acquitted Chris Ward from all three counts, and he left the court an innocent man. Speaking on behalf of Chris, his solicitor Niall Murphy told reporters:

“This Kafka-esque farce started from the premise that Chris Ward was guilty and worked backwards, rather than commencing with the evidence and working forwards. He should have appeared at this court today as a witness for the prosecution, instead he found himself in the dock for a crime he did not commit and of which he remains a victim."

The investigators finally had some luck in March 2009 when the financial advisor Ted Cunningham, after a 10 week trial, was found guilty of laundering more £3 million pounds of money from the Northern bank robbery.

In the trial, it had been revealed that Cunningham told the police about an unknown man, who he’d met on 4 occasions and had given him roughly £4.9 million. Cunningham argued during the trial that he’d said that under duress due to sleep deprivation and threats the police made that they’d leak that he’d revealed the names of IRA members, which would have likely had him killed. His 33-year-old son, Timothy, also pleaded guilty to four counts of money laundering.

In May 2010, another man who was investigated for laundering the stolen money was instead jailed for IRA membership. 43-year-old Tom Hanlon’s fingerprints were found on one of the money bags found in Ted Cunningham’s house that held money from the robbery. However, there wasn’t enough evidence tying him to the robbery, and instead evidence from his house was used to convict him of being a member of the IRA, including various documents and a Sinn Fein cheque book. Hanlon was sentenced to 3 years and 3 months in prison.

Later on in the year, in December, a Wikileaks cache revealed that the former Prime Minister, also known as Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern believed that Sinn Fein leaders Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness were aware of the plans to rob the Northern Bank, and that Ahern also believed that the Adams and McGuinness were members of the IRA military command and that they had “rock solid evidence” that proved it. In response, Gerry Adams said that Bertie Ahern:

“...said this at the time. We denied this and I deny it again this morning."

In May 2012, Ted Cunningham successfully had his sentence eliminated due to an issue with the search warrant the garda had used on his home, which the Supreme Court considered to be unconstitutional. At the appeal, Cunningham said that his time in prison, quote “was awful. I thought I was going to die there. It was the worst experience of my life." He was retried in February 2014, in which he pleaded guilty to laundering a total of £275,400 and receiving cheques totally €200,000. He was given a 5 year suspended sentence and banned from being a director or being employed in any financial institution.

And that is the last significant update on the Northern Bank Robbery. 10 years after the event, and only one person had been convicted who wasn’t even directly involved in the robbery itself. Speaking to the media in December 2014, a former Deputy Chief Constable for the PSNI, Alan McQuillan, said that he believed that the Provisional IRA had ended up stealing more money than they’d anticipated:

"Unless you have a system to manage it, you are in trouble. The Provos already had that system but they probably got so much all at once that they struggled to handle it. I suspect most of the cash went south, as they would want it under strict control as soon as possible. Cash is bulky and pretty traceable and so is difficult to get rid of, especially these days in what is more and more of a cashless economy."

McQuillan also believed that they would have sent the funds to contacts in other countries with lax financial controls before having the money brought back to the UK and Ireland. "People with an IRA finance background had previously turned up in all sorts of places - Moldova, Turkey, the North African states and Central Asia," he explained.

Interest in the media for the robbery waned with the lack of new information, until 2018 with the release of a novel called Northern Heist, written by a former IRA member Ricky O’Rawe. The novel involves the robbery of a bank that had similarities to the Northern Bank robbery. The robbery is committed by a criminal gang in Belfast, and the IRA are not involved in the robbery but demand a cut of the proceeds. This leads to speculation that O’Rawe based it on the actual robbery, and to some it confirmed that the IRA had some involvement in it.

In an interview for the International Crime Fiction Research Group in 2018, O’Rawe denied that he knew information about the Northern Bank Robbery, stating that the book was nothing more than a composite of several different robberies he had learned about over the years, which he described as:

"... the work of a certain gang of guys - this is not different gangs running around doing different tiger kidnappings. These things are too well thought-out."

O’Rawe also spoke about his IRA past, stating:

“I actually look back on all that and I see it as a huge negative. An awful loss of life, dreadful loss of life and I don’t think the outcome, the political outcome in terms of Republicanism, was worth one life or worth one minute in prison. So I’m very disillusioned with the whole thing."

Despite the increased interest in the robbery due to the novel, it lead to no significant new leads for the police.

In 2019, Ted Cunningham went to the High Court in Dublin to appeal for a judicial review as to what happened to the £3 million that the garda seized from this home back in 2005. Cunningham’s barrister, Barra McGrory said that they weren’t asking for the money to be returned but wanted proof of where the funds had gone. However, state Barrister Seamus Clarke argued that Mr Cunningham had not proven that the money was his, and that he had 3 months after his trial in 2014 to apply for a judicial review.

“There is a strict time limit, you can’t just turn up on a hearing date and say ‘time doesn’t really matter in this case’, you’d have chaos."

His appeal for a judicial review was denied. As of July 2020, the now 72-year-old Cunningham has been seeking to sue for refusing to return his £3 million, including suing Northern Bank – now trading as Danske Bank – and the Irish garda. There is no date as of this episode’s recording as to when this lawsuit will be heard in court.

Over the years, one question that people and media often asked is why Chris Ward and Kevin McMullan took part in the robbery rather than contacting the police as soon as they were left alone. Chris Ward explained it by saying,

“It's all well and good - and no disrespect to the bank - to say if you are ever kidnapped you never ever pay out, you phone this confidential helpline. That is a 'Superman' story - what is going to happen? Is Superman going to fly through your window and beat these men up and save your family? This is serious, serious reality stuff. There was no way in the world that I ever thought once of putting my family's lives at risk for the sake of a bank."

It is unknown what happened to the two men after Chris’ trial ended in 2008 and whether or not they continued to work for Northern Bank. They are only mentioned in reference to the robbery itself, rather than months or years after.

It has now been almost 16 years since the Northern Bank Robbery. It was a robbery that took a considerable amount of planning, investigating and manpower to pull off, and it allowed the perpetrators to steal over £26 million without ever stepping foot inside the bank itself. Despite the police forces from both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland investigating leads, and numerous arrests being made, only Ted Cunningham was convicted in relation to the robbery. It is unknown if the police are still actively looking into the case, but they have revealed no new information on the case for almost 10 years.

The complex history of Ireland, and the decades of violence that occurred there, mean that the level of distrust between both political sides continues to this day. The Good Friday Agreement wasn’t even 30 years ago, and so much of the population of Ireland still remember The Troubles and the impact that it had. Because of this, it is unlikely that the IRA would come forward and admit involvement with something as infamous as the Northern Bank Robbery if they were responsible due to the political repercussions. The general consensus is that the IRA were involved, either directly or indirectly, but there has never been any concrete evidence that proves that they were.

Because of this, the Northern Bank Robbery remains unresolved.

Episode Information

Episode Information

Written and researched by Gabriella Bromley

Hosted and produced by Micheal Whelan

Published on October 4th, 2020

Producers: Roberta Janson, Ben Krokum, Gabriella Bromley, Peggy Belarde, Quil Carter, Laura Hannan, Damion Moore, Brittany Norris, Amy Hampton, Steven Wilson, Scott Meesey, Marie Vanglund, Scott Patzold, Sue Kirk, Aimee McGregor, Sydney Scotton, Travis Scsepko, Thomas Ahearn, Bryan Hall, Marion Welsh, Patrick Laakso, Seth Morgan, Alyssa Lawton, Jo Wong, Tatum Bautista, Meadow Landry, Ryan Green, Teunia Elzinga, Dawn Kellar, Stephanie Joyner, and Elissa Hampton-Dutro

Music Credits

Original music created by Micheal Whelan through Amper Music

Other music created and composed by Ailsa Traves

Sources and other reading

Documentary: Ireland’s Greatest Robberies, TV3

Independent Monitoring Commission Report: https://cain.ulster.ac.uk/issues/politics/docs/imc/imc100205.pdf

BBC News http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/northern_ireland/4155851.stm

Belfast Telegraph https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/life/features/ex-ira-man-orawe-pens-novel-based-on-northern-bank-robbery-37361697.html

International Crime Fiction Research Group https://internationalcrimefiction.org/2018/10/20/an-interview-with-richard-orawe/

https://www.irishcentral.com/news/thenorth/northern-bank-robbery-irish-peace-process