Brazilian police have foiled an audacious plot to steal £250m ($331m) from a bank in São Paulo via a 500-metre underground tunnel complete with electric lighting and a ventilation system. Investigators say the gang planned to break into a São Paulo branch of the government-owned Banco do Brasil through the tunnel, which had been dug from a nearby rented property.
“This would have been the biggest bank robbery in the world,” chief investigator Fabio Pinheiro Lopes told the Guardian.
“They are an extremely dangerous and organised gang with a long history, including some violent crimes like homicide. If you look at their ages most are above 35 – well above the age of your average Brazilian criminal,” he added.
Authorities believe some suspects were involved with a 2011 robbery in São Paulo of 170 personal safes at a branch of the Itaú bank. Lopes said members of the gang were not connected to the Fortaleza Central Bank heist, as had been reported in the Brazilian media.
The robbery was allegedly planned for Friday or the weekend and seven stolen cars – found at the gang’s hideout – would have been used to transport the money.
Police named Alceu Céu Gomes Nogueira, 35, as the ringleader of the gang and they also accuse him of helping mastermind a huge robbery on a cash storage vault in Paraguay near the Brazilian border earlier this year, when thieves made off with some $13m (£9.8m) after using grenades, explosives and assault rifles. One police officer was killed.
Local media reported that the failed heist’s ringleader Nogueira commanded a prison riot in 2006 at the behest of the PCC, the same year the gang mounted a series of bloody attacks which brought São Paulo to its knees.
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