Minister warns banks about alerting gardai

Financial institutions have a duty to alert gardaí to offences to protect innocent lives and help prevent similar incidents occurring again, the Minister for Justice, Michael McDowell, has said.

The Minister made his comments yesterday in reference to National Irish Bank (NIB), which paid an estimated €270,000 ransom to an armed gang in Dublin on Tuesday instead of alerting gardaí. The gang had kidnapped a bank official's family.

Mr McDowell said that everyone who was aware of an offence had a duty to bring it to the attention of the Garda. Any other policy would only encourage repeat offences.

Later yesterday, NIB issued a statement saying the incident had been "of grave concern" to them.

"The lives of innocent people were threatened and we have been making every effort to comfort the family and our staff members who were involved. In line with the recommendations of An Garda Síochána, we have to date made no comment on the matter as the incident is the subject of an ongoing investigation. That remains our position. We are, however, concerned that some comment to date appears to unfairly judge the actions of the staff involved and in doing so fails to adequately take account of the dangerous, difficult and traumatic circumstances in which they found themselves. Our priority continues to be the safety and welfare of the family and our staff. We will continue to co-operate fully with the gardaí."

Mr McDowell said that as there was an ongoing investigation into the kidnapping of the NIB official, he did not want to say anything too specific. However, he added it would be "deeply regrettable if anybody out there with evil intentions or designs on financial institutions had any reason to believe that the financial institutions would fail in their duty to bring the matters immediately to the attention of the gardaí".

He added: "I do not think it requires my intervention to make it clear to everyone who runs a financial institution that if any of these events take place, the safety of their staff, the public and the integrity of the institution requires them to co-operate immediately and without fail with An Garda Síochána."

NIB gave its employee €270,000 from the safe in its Killester branch to give to an armed gang who had been holding his mother and two sisters hostage since the previous evening. The money was taken by the man to a drop-off point at 10.30am. Gardaí only became aware of the incident when the man's mother and one of his sisters managed to get to a house and raise the alarm.