Irish police seize cash which may have come from $70m bank heist

DUBLIN - Police in Ireland investigating money-laundering have arrested seven people and seized cash they believe could have come from a massive bank robbery in Northern Ireland blamed on Irish Republican Army (IRA) guerrillas.

The six men and one woman were arrested during separate operations in Cork and Dublin, Irish police said.

"During the course of the arrests, a quantity of cash was seized," the police service added in a statement.

A spokeswoman for the police in the British-ruled province of Northern Ireland said they were investigating whether any of the cash had come from the Belfast heist.

"It's too early to say for certain whether this is connected with the Northern Bank robbery," she added.

Police and politicians say the IRA, Northern Ireland's largest Catholic paramilitary group, was behind the Stg26.5 million ($NZ70.83 million) bank raid at the headquarters of Northern Bank in Belfast at the end of last year.

Irish state broadcaster RTE reported that police had seized Stg60,000 believed to come from the raid.

"RTE News has learned that the gardai (police) seized more than Stg2 million sterling in the Cork operations, which targeted funding to the Provisional IRA," it said on its website.

"And in a separate raid, they seized Stg60,000 which they believe to have come from the raid on the Northern Bank."

Northern Bank is withdrawing all its paper currency to thwart efforts to launder the cash, but police say Stg10 million of the haul is untraceable because it is in used notes or notes for which the bank did not keep serial numbers.

The fallout from the December 20 raid has dealt a huge blow to Anglo-Irish efforts to hand the running of the British-ruled province back to its divided Protestant and Catholic parties.

Protestant unionists - who support the union with Britain - are refusing to share power with Sinn Fein - which wants the province to become part of the Irish Republic - until the IRA disbands. London and Dublin have accused the IRA of blocking progress by clinging to paramilitarism and criminality.

A report by Northern Ireland's ceasefire watchdog concluded last week that the IRA - which killed around 1800 people during its campaign against British rule in Northern Ireland before calling a ceasefire in 1997 - also carried out three other robberies last year before the December bank raid.

It also said senior members of Sinn Fein - the IRA's political ally - sanctioned the raid.

Sinn Fein said it would wait for further information about the latest arrests before commenting. "Over the last four weeks we have seen people rush to judgment time and time again. We would urge people to exercise caution on this occasion and allow the truth to come out," the party said in a statement.

Although the violence that claimed more than 3600 lives in Northern Ireland over 30 years has largely stopped, politics has been deadlocked since 2002 when the regional government set up to share power between the two communities broke down.

Britain and Ireland say IRA crime is scuppering progress.

- REUTERS