The court of Ceara state in northeastern Brazil on Thursday sentenced Antonio Jussivan Alves dos Santos to 49 years and two months in prison for leading a gang that robbed the Central Bank's headquarters.
Dos Santos was arrested last week in the federal district of Brasilia, in the midwest of the country. On the occasion, he admitted having participated in the operation in August 2005 to dig a tunnel into the bank's safe, but he told the police that he was not the gang's leader.
The gang stole 164 million reais (97 million U.S. dollars) in the operation, which was considered the biggest bank robbery ever performed by a gang in Brazil's history.
The gang members dug a 78-meter-long tunnel, connecting a house in the neighborhood to the safe in the Central Bank's building, and took away five containers with unnumbered banknotes, worth 50 reais each, which could not be tracked.
In order to get to the safe, the gang had to drill into the 1.1-meter-deep floor, made with reinforced concrete covered with a steel layer. Inside the safe, there were motion detectors and surveillance cameras.
Another man charged with the robbery, Marcos Rogerio Machado, was sentenced to the same penalty as Dos Santos.
Source: Xinhua
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