Revisiting the Northern Bank robbery – the biggest heist in British history
Steven Moore, 04 May 2021
The BBC is taking a fresh look at the biggest heist in British history – the Northern Bank Robbery.
Broadcast on BBC One NI on Monday (May 3) at 9pm, it tells the story of how the multi-million pound robbery played out in the days before Christmas 2004. In a sophisticated operation, the gang took two families hostage for 24 hours, forcing two bank employees to rob £26.5 million from the Belfast cash centre.
With exclusive access to new source material – including police 999 calls along with internal bank CCTV and court documents – they piece together what could have happened.
Through interviews with key players – in politics, policing and financial crime – they uncover what happened to the main suspects in the cross-border police investigation and ask whether the robbery may, inadvertently, have helped the peace process.
The film includes interviews with Bertie Ahern, former Taoiseach; Michael McDowell, former Irish Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform; Sir Hugh Orde, former Chief Constable PSNI; Dr Mitchell Reiss, US Special Envoy to Northern Ireland under the Bush administration; Tom Kelly, Prime Minister Tony Blair’s official spokesperson between 2001-7); and Peter Robinson, former leader of DUP and First Minister of NI.
It’s telling that regulators aren’t asking why high-end hedge funds were allowed to target vulnerable corporations, such as GameStop, in an alleged short-selling scheme to drive their victims into bankruptcy. As the stock price of their prey goes to nearly zero, the hedge fund honchos could earn multimillions—or billions of dollars–in profits off of the companies closing their doors and laying off thousands of employees into the worst job market in modern history. 
On Monday, I reported that Markus Braun, the billionaire CEO of online payments company Wirecard, faced serious allegations over the company’s rapid growth and questionable business practices. Specifically, regulators and investors were concerned over claims that the FinTech company purported to have $2 billion dollars in a couple of Philippine banks. Investigations conducted by an outside auditor revealed that the money wasn’t there and possibly never existed. 
Sage Kelly is a Senior Managing Director and Head of Investment Banking at Cantor Fitzgerald. Mr. Kelly has over 20 years of experience in investment banking, most recently serving as the Head of Healthcare Investment Banking at Jefferies from 2009 to 2015. Prior to Jefferies, Mr. Kelly served as a Managing Director at UBS where he worked from 1999-2009, and at Salomon Smith Barney in the Healthcare Investment Banking Group from 1994-1999. 