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It could be a movie script. But the morning of December 21, 1992, went down in history as the Labor Bank “riff” of the century, with a lucrative sum of 5 billion drachmas!
It is one of the most impressive and methodical heists in Greek criminological chronicles, if not the most impressive. The journalistic characterization “rififi of the century” dominated the front pages of the time. To this day, the robbery at the Workbench remains unsolved …
The Chronicles
The morning of Monday, December 21, 1992, was not just any morning for the employees of the Labor Bank’s central branch, at 19 Kallirrois Street in Athens.
They were surprised to discover that the armored treasury, where the bank’s customer lockers were located, had been breached. 301 of the 1,151 lockers were open and their valuable contents had changed wings. The value of the stolen goods was estimated at about 5 billion drachmas.
The police were even more surprised when they discovered that the perpetrators had entered the shore through a tunnel that had opened from the Ilissos riverbed, which passes under Kallirrois street.
The tunnel was about 25 meters long and masterfully built. In fact, along their route they had placed rails and with a cart they removed the debris.
It is questionable how such a laborious activity did not receive adequate attention from a passerby, as police estimated that it took more than 10 days to three months to excavate the tunnel, according to some estimates.
Their activity within the bank took place on the weekend of December 19 and 20, where they quietly broke into the lockers that interested them without leaving the slightest trace. The alarm sounded several times, but the authorities considered it a fault.
The investigations were carried out blindly, when on Sunday 12 January 1993 empty jewelery boxes, vouchers, checks and other documents were accidentally discovered in a deserted place near the beach of Vravrona. They were obviously useless to the perpetrators, but useful to the authorities, who hoped to lead them to something useful.
But such a thing did not happen. The police considered almost certain that the perpetrators escaped with the robberies abroad, using a speedboat.
The arrest fiasco
In June 1994, the case took a new turn and rekindled the authorities’ hopes of being investigated. A prisoner for fraud at Korydallos prison, Syros Jumak Khalid, made revelations. He claimed that he participated in the grand robbery and involved some 17 bank executives and businessmen.
Jumah Khalid pointed out the culprits, but no evidence was ever found …
Justice acted swiftly and in August the investigator of the case issued arrest warrants against the deputy director of the Banco de Trabajo branch, Anagnostis Kalafatis, the businessmen Stelios Kolovos, Dionysis Papastamatatos and Emmanouil Spanoudos for indications of a judicial investigation of their participation in the case rififi. Kalafatis and Papastamatatos were placed in pre-trial detention, Kotsalos was temporarily released on restrictive terms, while the other two did not show up to apologize.
As of November, however, the case went in the opposite direction. In an interview with ANT1 television, Khalid denied what he had testified about the case and on January 25, 1995, he confirmed it to the judicial authorities.
A few days earlier, Kalafatis and Papastamatatos had been released from prison, while in April of the same year Kolovos, who had gone abroad to gather evidence, according to himself, that revealed their innocence, was arrested. In the fall of the same year, the curtain fell on an Appeals Chamber court, according to which the five defendants in the Labor Bank case were acquitted.
After all, who was the perpetrator?
The non-investigation of the case generated scenarios for the possible perpetrators. The script ranged from Italian and Russian gangsters with Greek accomplices to members of terrorist organizations such as ELA.
As for the fate of the Labor Bank, which was founded in 1975 by a group of capitalists led by the banker Konstantinos Kapsaskis, in 2000 it was absorbed by Eurobank.
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