A team of 45 detectives has been assigned to finding the 20-strong gang.Detective Superintendent Andy Sproule, who is leading the investigation, said the gang questioned the two men separately, showing “a knowledge of the bank and the banking system”, adding “this was a carefully planned operation by professional criminals.” The men were “forensically aware”, he said, dressing the woman in blue overalls and trainers to help avoid leaving traces, and cleaning up to avoid leaving fingerprints or other evidence.Their plan was executed the following day. At noon Mr McMullan and his junior went to work and did not raise the alarm. At six o’clock that evening, in what police believe may have been a dry run to test whether anyone had informed the police, one of the employees left the bank carrying more than £1m in new notes in a holdall and handed it to another man. His wife, Karen, was blindfolded and driven to an unknown location.

Mr McMullan’s junior, who the men had abducted from his west Belfast home in front of his terrified family, was then bought in.Both men were told they must comply with the gang’s plans to plunder the bank’s Belfast City Centre headquarters, or their relatives would be killed. It also emerged yesterday that the owners of the bank, National Australia Bank, will have to bear the cost of the robbery.Police are expected to apply urgent pressure to police informants in both the criminal and paramilitary underworld but are maintaining that it was not yet possible to say whether the raid was carried out by a criminal gang or a paramilitary group. The armed gang that pulled off one of Britain’s biggest bank robberies began the audacious heist by posing as policemen and convincing bank officials to allow them into their home, police revealed yesterday. It criticised the bank for trying to grind her down in litigation.Mary Stacey, the tribunal’s chairman, said in the judgment: “We conclude the dismissal was unfair. She was shabbily and unreasonably treated.”But the tribunal ruled that executives had not mistreated Ms Villalba because she was a woman. She alleged she had been the victim of a culture of sexism in which she was patronised and undermined by male colleagues.

In a landmark legal action, she sued her employers for £7.5m.The case had been closely watched in the City where there have been several other multi-million pound sex discrimination claims. Because the tribunal failed to uphold her claim for sex discrimination, Ms Villalba’s damages will be capped at £55,000 for unfair dismissal.Ms Villalba’s boss, Ausaf Abbas, told the tribunal in Croydon, south London, that Ms Villalba was very “high-maintenance” and that she had developed an “attitude problem”.The tribunal said that during the litigation the bank and its lawyers “were purposefully seeking to make life difficult and expensive for the claimant”.Merrill Lynch employed leading City lawyers and flew in senior executives from all over the world to defend the case.. He said Bellwood had managed to overcome his addiction and gave himself up when he saw a police television appeal about himself. A senior banker who claimed she was victimised by her bosses yesterday won her legal action for unfair dismissal against the American investment bank Merrill Lynch.
An employment tribunal in London ruled that Stephanie Villalba, 42, who earned £1m a year, was unfairly treated.