Robbery foiled after tunnel leading to bank vault found

Police were alerted after a metal rod poked through the vent, scraping a van on the main road

Argentinian police have unearthed an elaborate 220-metre tunnel leading towards a vault of a bank, foiling potentially the largest robbery in the country’s recent history.
A single construction rod poking up through the cobblestones of a street in the suburbs of Buenos Aires led to the unravelling of the would-be thieves’ plot.
The rogue metal spike scratched a delivery driver’s van – which he reported to the security guards at the nearby branch of Banco Macro, in the town of San Isidro.
The police were then alerted and discovered the rod was part of a well-constructed tunnel being dug from an empty warehouse and heading towards the bank’s safe deposit room.
No one in the area had reported any noise made by the tunnel’s builders, who have not been identified, because the solid structure was more than three metres underground.
“An apparent attempt to break into the safe deposit boxes of Banco Macro in the centre of the town was foiled,” said Ramón Lanús, the San Isidro mayor.
Speaking to the Mitre local radio station, Mr Lanús said that the tunnel was still 100 metres from reaching its intended destination.
He noted that it was a sophisticated construction, dressed in wood panelling and with air pipes so that oxygen entered the tunnel for its builders to breathe properly.
“We’ve never seen a tunnel like this before. It is a true work of engineering, with everything perfectly calculated,” a police detective told La Nación newspaper.
The police now plan to question the owner of the warehouse, from which the tunnel builders entered and exited their worksite over a period believed to be several months.
Argentina’s bank safe deposit boxes are a prime target for robbers. They often contain large amounts of undeclared cash in dollars belonging to wealthy Argentines seeking to protect their fortunes from inflation and devaluations in pesos, the national currency.
The planned tunnel robbery echoes the infamous “heist of the century” in 2006 at Río bank in another Buenos Aires suburb.
A group of criminals stole close to $19 million (£15 million) from safe deposit boxes, taking hostages and escaping on inflatable boats through storm drains.
The gang was eventually caught but most of the money was never recovered.