article_snippet.sent: Several retired detectives have already speculated that a gang must have had inside knowledge before sneaking into the block, abseiling down a lift shaft to the underground vault and drilling through a 7ft-thick concrete wall to reach the security boxes.
article_snippet.sent: ’s vaults in London’s diamond district over the Easter weekend .
article_snippet.sent: The robbers set off an intruder alarm just after midnight on Good Friday and the Southern Monitoring Alarm Company contacted the Metropolitan Police’s Central Communications Command.
article_snippet.sent: ‘the police knew in advance that it would be closed over Easter so the police must have realised nobody was meant to be in the vaults.
article_snippet.sent: Police are examining startling similarities between the Hatton Garden heist and a bank raid in Berlin two years ago.
article_snippet.sent: One line of inquiry is that a crew of specialist Eastern European thieves may have travelled to the UK for the raid at Easter.
article_snippet.sent: The operation was the mirror image of one on the vault of the Volksbank in Steglitz, south-west Berlin, in January 2013.
article_snippet.sent: The gang spent weeks digging a tunnel from a rented parking space to reach the walls of the underground vault.
article_snippet.sent: The gang then drilled four massive holes in the wall after the bank closed on a Friday afternoon.
article_snippet.sent: The wooden boards used to construct a tunnel came from Poland, and bottles of Polish beer were left behind.
article_snippet.sent: In both the London and Berlin raids police suspect an insider passed on vital information that enabled the thieves to work out how to beat security systems.
article_snippet.sent: Police in Germany obtained DNA samples of some members of The gang, but Police in Germany have never been traced.