On 20 December 2004, £26.5 million in cash was stolen from the headquarters of Northern Bank on Donegall Square West in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Having taken family members of two bank officials hostage, an armed gang forced the workers to help them steal both used and unused pound sterling banknotes. The money was then loaded into a van and driven away in two trips. This was one of the largest bank robberies in the history of the United Kingdom.
The Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI), the Independent Monitoring Commission (IMC), the British government and the Taoiseach all claimed the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) was responsible. This was denied by the IRA and by Sinn Féin. Throughout 2005, the police forces in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland made arrests and carried out house searches. A sum of £2.3 million was impounded at the house of a financial adviser, Ted Cunningham, in County Cork and Phil Flynn was forced to resign as chairman of the Bank of Scotland (Ireland), because he was a director of one of Cunningham's companies. Cunningham was convicted in 2009 of money laundering, had his conviction quashed in 2012 and was convicted at retrial in 2014. Chris Ward, one of the bank officials threatened by the gang, was arrested in November 2005 and charged with robbery. The prosecution offered no evidence at trial and he was released.
Northern Bank announced soon after the heist that it would replace its own bank notes, in denominations of £5, £10, £20, £50 and £100. Alongside the murder of Robert McCartney in 2005, the robbery adversely affected the Northern Ireland peace process. It damaged the relationship between the Taoiseach Bertie Ahern and the Sinn Féin representatives Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness. Although Cunningham and several others were eventually convicted of crimes uncovered during the investigation, nobody has ever been held directly responsible for the robbery.
In the early 2000s, Northern Bank (now Danske Bank) was the largest retail bank in Northern Ireland, with 95 branches. It was then owned by National Australia Bank and its headquarters were at Donegall Square West in Belfast. It was one of four banks in Northern Ireland permitted to print its own bank notes, in denominations of £5, £10, £20, £50 and £100.
On the night of Sunday 19 December 2004, groups of armed men arrived at the homes of two employees of Northern Bank, one in Downpatrick, County Down, the other in Poleglass, west Belfast. Chris Ward was taken from his house in County Down and driven to Poleglass, where Kevin McMullan (his supervisor at the bank) had been tied up by men disguised as officers from the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI). Gunmen remained at Ward's home, keeping his family hostage. McMullan's wife was taken from her home and held at an unknown location. The criminals left at 06:00 on Monday morning, 20 December, having instructed the two workers to report for work as normal at the bank's headquarters.
The gang constantly kept in touch with McMullan and Ward using mobile telephones it had given them. The two men were ordered to tell staff to go home early and to fill a bag with £1 million in £50 and £100 notes. Ward was then instructed to leave the bank carrying the bag and go to a bus stop in nearby Upper Queen Street, where one of the robbers picked it up. This was later regarded as being a test run for the main theft in the evening. McMullan and Ward remained at work after the close of business and were instructed to load crates of banknotes onto trolleys. Having told the security staff they would be wheeling out rubbish for collection, they made four trips to move the trolleys from the basement to the bullion bay, where money was normally picked up and dropped off. They covered the crates with office furniture and empty cardboard boxes to disguise them. After Ward called the gang, a white van came to the headquarters and was permitted by security to enter the bay, where it took the two bank employees 15 minutes to load everything in.
The criminals said they would come back to pick up more trolleys, ordering Ward and McMullan to fill up as many as possible. By the time the van returned, the workers had only filled two more, which were again wheeled up from basement to the van. They then locked up the bank, setting alarms and leaving as usual; they drove to Ward's house, where the masked men were still guarding his family. At around 21:00, the criminals left, carefully erasing any forensic trace of their presence by scrubbing surfaces down and taking away cups they had used. After twenty minutes, McMullan left and drove back to his house. Around this time, McMullan's wife was driven to Drumkeeragh Forest near Ballynahinch and released. She found her way to a house to raise the alarm and was treated for hypothermia. At 23:00, following his final instructions, Ward called the police to inform them the robbery had taken place.
The criminals took £26.5 million: £16.5 million in uncirculated Northern Bank pound sterling banknotes; £5.5 million in used Northern Bank sterling notes; £4.5 million in used notes supplied by other banks and smaller cash amounts in other currencies including euros and US dollars. The new and uncirculated notes (£9 million in £20 notes and £7.5 million in £10 notes) would be hard to launder since the bank immediately announced the serial numbers, but the used notes were untraceable. The police quickly set up an investigation composed of 50 detectives. Assistant Chief Constable Sam Kincaid commented "this was not a lucky crime, this was a well-organised crime".
Although the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) initially refused to be drawn as to who might be involved, several commentators, including journalist Kevin Myers writing in The Daily Telegraph, quickly blamed the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA). One senior police officer quoted in The Guardian newspaper said: "This operation required great expertise and coordination, probably more than the loyalist gangs possess".
On 7 January 2005, the Chief Constable of the PSNI Hugh Orde issued an interim report in which he blamed the Provisional IRA for the robbery. The British government concurred with Orde's assessment, as did the Independent Monitoring Commission (IMC – the body appointed by the Irish and British governments to oversee the Northern Ireland ceasefires). However, Sinn Féin denied the Chief Constable's claim, saying the IRA had not conducted the raid and that their officials had not known of or sanctioned the robbery. Martin McGuinness (a leading Sinn Féin negotiator) said that Orde's accusation represented "nothing more than politically-biased allegations. This is more to do with halting the process of change which Sinn Féin has been driving forward than with anything that happened at the Northern Bank". The Irish Taoiseach Bertie Ahern said that "an operation of this magnitude...has obviously been planned at a stage when I was in negotiations with those that would know the leadership of the Provisional movement". The IMC recommended that Sinn Féin be fined for authorising the heist and remarked in the report that "the leadership and rank and file of Sinn Féin need to make the choice between continued association with and support for PIRA criminality and the path of an exclusively democratic political party".
The Provisional IRA issued a statement on 18 January 2005, saying "the IRA has been accused of involvement in the recent Northern Bank robbery. We were not involved". Despite this denial, it was widely believed by Northern Irish politicians that the Provisional IRA was responsible. Commentators in the UK mainstream media speculated that the heist had been intended either to secure a pension fund for IRA active service members or to support Sinn Féin's electoral campaign. In February 2005, the Irish Minister for Justice Michael McDowell accused Gerry Adams (Sinn Féin MP for Belfast West), McGuinness and Martin Ferris (Sinn Féin TD for Kerry North), of not only being IRA members but leading it from their positions on the IRA Army Council.