Police question Equity Bank staff over daring Moyale airstrip heist
Detectives have started questioning staff at Equity Bank’ Moyale branch after an unknown amount of money was stolen at the Moyale Airstrip in Marsabit County while on transit.
On Thursday, all the senior employees and the bank’s Internal Security Unit at the Moyale Equity Bank were being grilled by police to establish if the daring robbery was an inside job.
The money was reportedly being transported by air from Nairobi to Moyale town when armed thugs struck, in the heist that took less than 10 minutes.
According to a police statement, the robbery was executed by three armed robbers when then took off on a motorcycle.
The plane, which had only three occupants; a pilot, his assistant and a cash officer from Wells Fargo Courier Company, landed at around 1:30pm at the Odda Airstrip, where the three men lay in wait and pounced on the cash.
Police reports indicate that Equity Bank officials were at the airport waiting to receive the money from the aircraft before the ambush by the men.
The pilot told police one of the gunmen pointed a pistol at him as his accomplices entered the plane and picked two moneybags and left one behind.
They later jumped onto a motorcycle that was at the airstrip’s waiting bay and a made away through a chain-link fence and fled with no injuries reported during the heist.
Police claim that there had been no prior security deployment to protect the cash on arrival at the airstrip.
It is yet unclear how much cash was in the two stolen bags as police investigate the heist that comes less than a week after thugs stole Sh72 million from Standard Chartered Bank’s Nairobi West branch in Nairobi.