Detectives investigating Britain's largest robbery discovered several million pounds in cash at a car repair business in an industrial complex in southeast London, police said on Friday.
Officers who raided the industrial estate in Welling found a number of bags filled with notes in a yard behind the car repair shopbusiness, Kent police said. Though they said they were not certain how much money was in the bags, police indicated it was thought to amount to "several million pounds."
A 43-year-old man was arrested at the unit and was being questioned by police.
The robbery of the Securitas Cash Management warehouse in Kent, which is about 50km southeast of London, netted ?53 million (US$92 million) after the thieves kidnapped the cash depot manager, his wife and their 9-year-old son during the night of Feb. 21-22.
A total of five people have been charged so far in the case.
John Reeves, owner of ENR Cars where the bags of cash were found, left for Spain two days after the robbery. From there, he told reporters that he was innocent and would return to Britain should police wish to question him. He also said the man arrested was innocent, too.
He said the part of the building where the money appeared to have been found had been sublet to someone else.
Earlier on Friday, the police charged the fifth suspect in the case. Lea John Rusha, 33, a roofer, was charged with conspiracy to commit robbery, Kent police said.
Another one of those charged, Jetmir Bucpapa, 24, appeared in court and was ordered remanded in custody until a further court date on March 13. He is accused of conspiracy to commit robbery.
‘UNUSUAL EVENT’: The Australian defense minister said that the Chinese navy task group was entitled to be where it was, but Australia would be watching it closely The Australian and New Zealand militaries were monitoring three Chinese warships moving unusually far south along Australia’s east coast on an unknown mission, officials said yesterday. The Australian government a week ago said that the warships had traveled through Southeast Asia and the Coral Sea, and were approaching northeast Australia. Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles yesterday said that the Chinese ships — the Hengyang naval frigate, the Zunyi cruiser and the Weishanhu replenishment vessel — were “off the east coast of Australia.” Defense officials did not respond to a request for comment on a Financial Times report that the task group from
Asian perspectives of the US have shifted from a country once perceived as a force of “moral legitimacy” to something akin to “a landlord seeking rent,” Singaporean Minister for Defence Ng Eng Hen (黃永宏) said on the sidelines of an international security meeting. Ng said in a round-table discussion at the Munich Security Conference in Germany that assumptions undertaken in the years after the end of World War II have fundamentally changed. One example is that from the time of former US president John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address more than 60 years ago, the image of the US was of a country
DEFENSE UPHEAVAL: Trump was also to remove the first woman to lead a military service, as well as the judge advocates general for the army, navy and air force US President Donald Trump on Friday fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General C.Q. Brown, and pushed out five other admirals and generals in an unprecedented shake-up of US military leadership. Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social that he would nominate former lieutenant general Dan “Razin” Caine to succeed Brown, breaking with tradition by pulling someone out of retirement for the first time to become the top military officer. The president would also replace the head of the US Navy, a position held by Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead a military service,
BLIND COST CUTTING: A DOGE push to lay off 2,000 energy department workers resulted in hundreds of staff at a nuclear security agency being fired — then ‘unfired’ US President Donald Trump’s administration has halted the firings of hundreds of federal employees who were tasked with working on the nation’s nuclear weapons programs, in an about-face that has left workers confused and experts cautioning that the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE’s) blind cost cutting would put communities at risk. Three US officials who spoke to The Associated Press said up to 350 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) were abruptly laid off late on Thursday, with some losing access to e-mail before they’d learned they were fired, only to try to enter their offices on Friday morning