Qualla: Northern Bank robbery

Northern Bank robbery: Introduction

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ardfern, CC BY-SA 3.0. The plan needed two ordinary Monday mornings. On Sunday 19 December 2004, two armed gangs - disguised as Police Service of Northern Ireland officers in uniform - simultaneously knocked on the doors of two suburban Belfast homes. At one house in County Down they took the family of bank official Chris Ward hostage. At another in Poleglass they took the family of his supervisor Kevin McMullan. The hostages were held overnight by gunmen. On Monday morning the two men were sent to work at the Northern Bank's headquarters on Donegall Square West, just behind Belfast's City Hall, with instructions to behave normally and to remain after closing time. That evening they loaded crates of pound-sterling banknotes onto trolleys and helped wheel them to a waiting white Ford Transit van. The van made two trips. By midnight the gang had taken £26.5 million - the largest cash theft in United Kingdom history at the time. Nobody has ever been convicted of the robbery itself.

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Image: Ardfern | CC BY-SA 3.0

Northern Bank robbery: Why Belfast Could Be Robbed for £26.5 Million

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ardfern, CC BY-SA 3.0. Northern Bank, now Danske Bank, was at the time the largest retail bank in Northern Ireland with 95 branches. It was one of four banks - the others were Bank of Ireland, First Trust, and Ulster Bank - permitted to print its own sterling banknotes in denominations from £5 to £100....

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Northern Bank robbery: Who Did It (Almost Everyone Agrees)

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit NHS Confederation, CC BY 2.0. The Police Service of Northern Ireland, the Independent Monitoring Commission, the British government, the Irish government, and the then-Taoiseach Bertie Ahern all publicly named the Provisional IRA as responsible. PSNI Chief Constable Hugh Orde issued an interim report on 7 Jan...

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Northern Bank robbery: Money in Compost, Money in a Pub Toilet

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ardfern, CC BY-SA 3.0. What investigators did find was money. In February 2005, Garda Siochana raids in County Cork led to the discovery of £2.3 million buried in compost at the home of a financial adviser named Ted Cunningham. Another Cork man handed in £175,000; three businessmen handed in £225,000; ...

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Northern Bank robbery: The Kafka-esque Farce

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ardfern, CC BY-SA 3.0. In November 2005, Chris Ward - one of the two bank officials whose family had been taken hostage - was arrested by the PSNI and charged with robbery and using a firearm. The prosecution case rested on a suspicious work-rota change, inconsistencies in his original statements, and ...

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Image: Ardfern | CC BY-SA 3.0

Northern Bank robbery: The Cost to the Peace

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ardfern, CC BY-SA 3.0. The robbery's largest casualty was the Good Friday Agreement's momentum. In the months after December 2004, the Northern Ireland power-sharing institutions remained suspended; Sinn Fein-DUP negotiations stalled; American Sinn Fein fundraising was suspended by the Bush administrat...

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Image: Ardfern | CC BY-SA 3.0