© ALI HAIDER / epa / Corbis
Back in May , The Washington Postreported that Libyan rebels hadobtained fundsby “ liberating ” governing assets worth $ 505 million in the Central Bank of Libya ’s Benghazi branch . Ali Tarhouni ( pictured ) , the rebel ’ rector of finance , explain the move to strange journalists : “ have me put this elbow room : We robbed our own camber . ”Locksmiths used an industrial drill to start the vault restrain Qaddafi ’s cash . The straight procedure also had a desire promotional material issue , highlighting the rebels ’ need for funds ( possibly drawn from Qaddafi ’s frosty strange assets ) .
You ca n’t deny there ’s something almost romantic about political bank robberies . And unsurprisingly there is a long ( if not always goodly ) history of revolutionaries robbing Sir Joseph Banks to support their causes .
1. Stalin, Man of Steal
Though he would have very likely been a criminal anyway , Josef Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili , a.k.a . “ Koba , ” a.k.a . “ Stalin ” ( Isle of Man of brand ) , was one of a phone number of bank robber working for the Communist Bolshevik and Menshevik parties during their struggle against Russia ’s Czarist monarchy .
Most notably , Koba ( whose nom de guerre came from a Russian story about bandits ) was the chief deviser of the famous stage armed robbery in downtown Tiflis on June 26 , 1907 , which net the Bolsheviks the equivalent of $ 3.4 million in today ’s dollar . No one knows whether he take part in the real executing of the attack , in which his squad lob grenades at the coin bank stagecoach and its mounted bodyguard from on top of a nearby construction , then opened fire on the guards , killing up to 40 guard and civilians as well as a routine of knight , according to present-day paper .
Stalin ’s radical comrade Simon Ter - Petrossian , a.k.a . Kamo , seems to have taken most of the risks and done most of the factual fighting in the Tiflis job ( including a severe bomb - name wound , suffered beforehand , which give him limit to bed for a month ) while Stalin calmly smoke a cigaret , according to a police account . In typical style , Lenin strain to outstrip himself from the Tiflis job when the Bolsheviks started getting bad press . after Trotsky carp that Koba just stood back and allow others do all the fighting ; of path , criticizing Stalin was never a super estimate , as Trotsky would find out when Stalin ’s agents killed him with a pickax in Mexico City in 1938 . Kamo die in a suspicious motorcycle accident in 1922 , leading some to speculate Stalin also had him fret out because of his role in the bank building robbery .
2. Mao and the Five-Finger Discount of the Proletariat
Another subversive who grew up on tales of Robin Hood - like bandits , Mao Zedong emphasize the need for freedom fighter to recruit “ bands of brigands and bandits , ” if only to prevent the enemy from recruiting the tough guys to their side . If these hardened criminals could be utilize to endure the revolutionary cause , all the better .
In September 1927 , Mao organized an rebellion in Hupei that began with a dramatic train looting capture a camber money consignment ; this feat inspired Nipponese Communists to undertake a disastrous 1932 bank robbery that end in arrests and tough atomic number 59 . Not to be scoop , in May 1949 Mao ’s opposition Chiang Kai - shek joined force with a notorious mobster list “ Big - Eared Du ” ( Du Yuesheng ) to lawlessly remove ( or “ steal ” ) the nationalistic government ’s gold from the Bank of China in Shanghai , shortly before fleeing to Taiwan .
Interestingly , Mao himself would let loose another wave of revolutionary bank robbery in mainland China … decades after vote down Chiang Kai - Shek ’s Nationalists in the Chinese Civil War . During the Cultural Revolution from 1966 - 1976 , Mao seek to reconstruct his power by stirring up the Red Guards – young fire-eater committed to the full overthrow of Chinese society . Of course one of the best means of shaking up society is rob banks , and Red Guard thugs held up stacks of banks in a handful of provinces from 1966 until 1969 ( when Mao , ironically present himself as the guardian of law and order , tell the Red Guards to cut down it out ) .
3. Robbing Banks in the Promised Land
During their struggle to create the Judaic state in the 1930s-1940s , big Zionist chemical group like the Haganah and Irgun relied on strange donors and “ taxes ” levied on the Jews of Palestine for funds . Smaller outfits had to happen their own daily bread ; one band of Zionist outlaws , the Stern Gang , made ending meet by robbing banking concern across the British mandate of Palestine . launch by Avraham Stern in 1940 as the Irgun Tsvai Leumi or “ National Military Organization ” ( later the Lohamei Herut Israel , “ battler for the Freedom of Israel , ” or Lehi for scant ) the Stern Gang was criticize for terrorist tactics including assassinate a U.N. mediator and a British government rector for the Middle East . So , soak banking concern come by nature .
On September 16 , 1940 , the Stern Gang staged a audacious holdup of the British - owned Anglo - Palestine Bank in Tel Aviv , making off with £ 4,500 ( about $ 275,000 today ) . However , a second bank robbery direct an Arab - possess bank in Jerusalem ended in fiasco , leaving two bank robbers and three other Judaic militants dead . Subsequently the bunch carry out successful heists at the Bank Pekao and Mercantile Discount Bank . Their biggest achiever was a heist place the Barclays Bank branch in Tel Aviv in 1948 . After attempt and failing to tunnel into the bank burial vault , they decide on the brute force method : on April 28 , 1948 , forty Stern gunmen surrounded the bank while a smaller group entered and made off with about $ 38,000 ( $ 340,000 in today ’s money ) . Asked why the “ Freedom Fighters ” were stealing from the public , a Stern spokesman reasoned “ there ’s a war on , ” and debate that the pack ’s habituation on money box robbery at least proved it was n’t receiving Soviet living , as some critic alleged .
4. The PLO’s Week-long Bank Robbery
One of the biggest bank heists in history was carried out in January 1976 by bitter enemies –Yasser Arafat ’s Palestinian Liberation Organization in alignment with Lebanon ’s Christian Phalange – plus a whole motley of shady international criminals . camber heists bring people together !
The peculiar - pair team was n’t the only unusual aspect of the robbery , which place the external headquarters of the British Bank of the Middle East in Beirut and proceeded at what might be described as a leisurely pace . Under the command of Ali Hassan Salameh ( a.k.a . Abu Hassan , the mastermind of the 1972 Munich Olympics onset ) on January 20 , 1976 , a squad of PLO operatives gained entree to the bank by blasting out the wall from a neighboring church building . The PLO crew was n’t able to spread the coin bank bank vault , but with Lebanon paralyze by a civil war and local law enforcement outgunned ( or on the take ) , they had plentitude of time to arrange a workaround .
Salameh ’s gunmen occupy the bank and surrounding street for two day while his external contacts summoned locksmith utilise by the Corsican mob . On January 24 , the Corsicans finally broke into the main vault , and the heist team then expend two whole years load the loot into hand truck , include millions of dollars in Lebanese and alien currency ; a veritable mountain of gold bullion ; stock certificates and pallbearer bonds ; and jewelry , rare coins and other valuables from item-by-item safe deposit box . The full haul was at least £ 25 million , equal an incredible $ 210 million in today ’s money , and mayhap twice that much , with the Corsicans getting a third and the PLO keeping the ease .
The Corsicans took their share ( one truck load ) to the Beirut airport , where they loaded it on to a hired DC-3 airliner and disappeared back into their mob hideout . After the Corsicans got out of Beirut safely , the PLO adulterate their share ( three truck burden ) into another plane which impart them directly to Geneva , Switzerland – land of the secret bank account . Most of the stocks and bond certificate were sold back to their original owners for about a third of their face value , allowing savvy proprietor to collect the policy and get their dimension back . These sales nett the PLO another $ 50 million-$100 million , which was deposited in secret bank accounts in Switzerland , Lebanon , Cyprus , Greece , and West Germany .
5. The Shining Path Takes the Low Path
found in 1969 by Abimael Guzman Reynoso , Peru ’s Maoist motion , the Sendero Luminoso ( “ Shining Path ” ) gained a reputation for unflinching viciousness with terrorist attack in the 1980s : from 1980 - 2000 , shine Path violence resulted in the deaths of 30,000 Peruvian concord to the Peruvian government activity , not to mention $ 20 billion in damage , leading Guzman to boast that the Shining Path was fighting “ the most economical warfare on earth . ”
With up to 5,000 armed insurgents on the payroll department , bank looting – bad , make that “ radical expropriations ” – soon became a favorite substance of lift monetary fund for their planned revolution in Peru , along with “ rotatory taxes ” recruit on cocaine trafficker and kidnapping for ransom money . In 1981 Shining Path operatives carry out over 50 bank looting in Lima alone , and the wave of bank robberies continued through the mid-1980s , with 150 robberies across Peru in 1982 , as well as international heists in Brazil and Mexico . Although the Shining Path decline following Guzman ’s capture in 1993 , many of the same maneuver ( particularly money box robberies and taxes on drug dealers ) were espouse by other South American terrorist outfits , include Tupac Amaru , which carry out its first major camber armed robbery in Lima in 1982 , and the Ecuadoran group AVC , which robbed five banks from 1986 - 1987 .
6. Irish Eyes Aren’t Smiling
Robbing bank may seem like a romantic , victimless crime , but gamy - visibility misdeeds still have a way of engender a lot of bad publicity . The Irish Republic Army find this out following its dramatic heist targeting the Northern Bank headquarters in Belfast , Northern Ireland , on December 20 - 21 , 2004 . Some of the bad atomic number 59 may have been due to the unusually intrusive approach : or else of walking into the coin bank when it was open , two group of IRA gunmen kidnapped the bank managers from their home and held their family surety at secret locations to ensure their cooperation . With their loved unity in jeopardy , the bank managers went to work the next mean solar day as if nothing was out of the average … then stay on after the close of concern to let the squad of robbers into the bank that even . Altogether the robber made off with currency deserving £ 26.5 million , or about $ 42 million .
After a public shout over the cruel method acting behind the looting , Sinn Fein ( the political arm of the IRA ) and the IRA itself both denied responsibility for the bank heist , but Irish and British law enforcement express assurance that the IRA was the culprit . The following calendar month saw several million pound of steal money convalesce , and a number of hitch ; however , away from one conviction for money - laundering , most of the people involved have never been lodge with a crime due to lack of grounds .
