Sascha Wil­son

Po­lice are in­ves­ti­gat­ing how thieves were able to dig a tun­nel and gain en­try to Re­pub­lic Bank’s Cou­va branch. The bank is op­po­site the po­lice sta­tion.

The dis­cov­ery of the break-in was made some­time af­ter 8 am yes­ter­day, fol­low­ing the long week­end.

A hole was found in a back wall lead­ing to the bank while an­oth­er hole was dis­cov­ered un­der an­oth­er build­ing on the same com­pound.

None of the tools used in the break-in was found at the scene.

Po­lice were told by of­fi­cials that the bank was se­cured on Fri­day.

Re­pub­lic’s gen­er­al man­ag­er of Group Mar­ket­ing and Com­mu­ni­ca­tions, Karen Tom Yew-Jar­dine, con­firmed the in­ci­dent but did not dis­close any de­tails about how en­try to the bank was gained. She al­so de­clined to say whether any­thing was stolen.

How­ev­er, Tom Yew-Jar­dine as­sured that cus­tomers’ files were not com­pro­mised and the cash vault was not breached.

Echo­ing sim­i­lar state­ments through a press re­lease, the bank stat­ed that an in­ves­ti­ga­tion has been launched in­to the in­ci­dent and they are co-op­er­at­ing ful­ly with the au­thor­i­ties.

“We can con­firm that all cus­tomers’ records and files re­main se­cured and the branch’s cash vault was not breached. As this is an on­go­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tion, the bank will be lim­it­ing any fur­ther state­ment on this mat­ter at this time,” the bank stat­ed.

Mean­while, Cou­va Point Lisas Cham­ber of Com­merce pres­i­dent Mukesh Ram­s­ingh ex­pressed con­cern over the in­ci­dent in the area.

“The feed­back so far from the busi­ness­men is that every­body is con­cerned that if they could go in­to a high lev­el se­cured place as a bank, what is left for their busi­ness­es and we hope that the po­lice ser­vice ap­pre­hend some sus­pects as soon as pos­si­ble,” Ram­s­ingh said.

He said the po­lice must be giv­en the re­sources and train­ing to be on the same lev­el as the crim­i­nals, who are now us­ing so­phis­ti­cat­ed tools and tech­nol­o­gy to car­ry out their crimes.

“We no­tice that there is a very huge uptick in crime. Hav­ing seen what took place through the so­cial me­dia of Re­pub­lic Bank right op­po­site the Cou­va Po­lice Sta­tion, shows that the crim­i­nals now be­ing more and more brazen. They are be­com­ing more and more high-tech. Look­ing at the pic­tures are like look­ing at a movie scene. Be­ing in con­tact with the po­lice on a reg­u­lar ba­sis, we hear the same con­cerns that they are not prop­er­ly equipped be­cause the crim­i­nal are now more high-tech than the po­lice,” he said.

Not­ing that crim­i­nals were al­so com­ing from out­side of the area and com­mit­ting crimes in Cou­va, he said the po­lice need to tack­le crime with new age tech­nol­o­gy.

“Even if the of­fi­cers now can­not be ca­pa­ble of do­ing it, there are train­ing and train­ing fa­cil­i­ties and train­ing pro­grammes that can bring the po­lice sta­tion and the po­lice of­fi­cers up to date to tack­le these new types of crim­i­nals.”

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