Thieves made off with over $160,000 in cash af­ter break­ing in­to Re­pub­lic Bank’s Ari­api­ta Av­enue, Port-of-Spain branch over the In­de­pen­dence long week­end.

Po­lice were told the break-in at the branch, lo­cat­ed on the cor­ner of Ari­api­ta Av­enue and Mur­ray Street, oc­curred some­time be­tween Sat­ur­day night and Mon­day morn­ing.

Se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers re­port­ing for du­ty at the bank yes­ter­day dis­cov­ered that a wall near the vault had been bust­ed in­to. How­ev­er, it ap­peared the ban­dits were un­able in their at­tempt to ac­cess the bank’s main vault. But fur­ther checks by bank of­fi­cials re­vealed that a cash bin had been breached.

Po­lice said the ban­dits made off with TT$127,000, US$5,000, Cdn$500, £205 and Eu­ros $427.

In a state­ment yes­ter­day, Re­pub­lic Bank Lim­it­ed con­firmed the break-in at the branch stat­ing: “Overnight teller tills were tam­pered with and a val­ue of less than $200,000 was stolen.”

The bank said it is pro­vid­ing video footage and oth­er elec­tron­ic se­cu­ri­ty ev­i­dence to as­sist the po­lice in their in­ves­ti­ga­tions.

ASP An­der­son Pa­ri­man and In­spec­tor Lopez of the Port-of-Spain CID are lead­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to the in­ci­dent.