It took eight armed men less than three minutes to make off with $30 million worth of gold bars at the Sao Paulo international airport, in what could be the second-largest heist in the history of Brazil.
The criminals, disguised as police officers, made away with 1,587 pounds of gold that was destined for New York and Zurich. They also took hostage of two airport workers, according to the police.
It was suspected that the “well-organized gang”, according to Police Chief João Carlos Miguel Hueb, might have kidnapped the family of a senior airport employee in order to gain insider information about the gold cargo.
They then disguised their pickup as a Brazilian federal police vehicle before orchestrating the heist at the airport. At the terminal, four men exited the truck wearing face coverings, Reuters reported, with at least one carrying a rifle.
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Police said that no one was hurt during the robbery and they had arrested three people suspected of involvement in the theft, including an airport cargo supervisor who initially claimed he had been kidnapped.
Another of those arrested is accused of helping arrange transport of the stolen gold, which has not yet been tracked down.
Such audacious heists are not new to Brazil, where robbers tunneled into the central bank’s unit in Fortaleza and stole $67 million in local currency in 2015, and a similar attempt to tunnel into the vault of another bank was foiled in 2017.
