BBC Documentaries

Heist: The Northern Bank Robbery (2021x56)

: 03, 2021

Two of Northern Ireland’s leading journalists, Darragh MacIntyre and Sam McBride, shed new light on one of the most notorious crimes in UK-Irish history – the Northern Bank robbery. Two families held hostage for 24 hours, two bank employees forced to rob £26.5 million. Sixteen years on, despite an international police investigation and heavily-rumoured IRA involvement, it remains unsolved. With access to internal bank CCTV, police 999 calls, archive footage and court transcripts, Darragh and Sam piece together how the heist was carried out and explore various theories that surround it. Through interviews with key players – in politics, policing and financial crime – they uncover what happened to main suspects in the cross-border police investigation and ask whether the robbery, inadvertently, helped the peace process.