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Holland Village bank robbery suspect nabbed in Bangkok

SINGAPORE — The suspect behind the bank heist last Thursday (July 7) had laid out his escape plan out of the country, as it emerged on Monday (July 12) that he left for Thailand right after making off with about S$30,000 from the Standard Chartered (StanChart) branch in Holland Village.

CID officers packing up outside the Standard Chartered bank branch at Holland Village after a robbery occurred on July 7. Photo: Ooi Boon Keong

CID officers packing up outside the Standard Chartered bank branch at Holland Village after a robbery occurred on July 7. Photo: Ooi Boon Keong

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SINGAPORE — The suspect behind the bank heist last Thursday (July 7) had laid out his escape plan out of the country, as it emerged on Monday (July 12) that he left for Thailand right after making off with about S$30,000 from the Standard Chartered (StanChart) branch in Holland Village.

After three days on the run, the suspect, a Caucasian, was arrested in Bangkok by the Royal Thai Police and the Singapore authorities are talking to their counterparts “to see whether the suspect can be released into our custody”, the police said in a statement on Monday.

Singapore and Thailand do not have an extradition treaty but have strong bilateral ties.

No details of the suspect, such as his age and nationality, nor the circumstances leading to the arrest were given by the police on Monday. 

But International Business Times quoted Major General Apichart Suriboonya, who heads Thailand’s Interpol unit, as saying the suspect is a Canadian who arrived in the country at 5.08pm on Thursday and was arrested at around noon on Sunday at Boxpacker Hostel in Bangkok.

The robbery happened at around 11.25am and flights from Singapore to Bangkok take about two-and-a-half hours.

The suspect had gone into the StanChart branch that day and handed a female teller a demand note. No weapon was brandished during the heist and no one was hurt.

After the teller handed over about S$30,000 in cash, the suspect bolted, fleeing on foot in the direction of Chip Bee Gardens, which is directly opposite the bank.

The police said officers from Clementi Division, the Criminal Investigation Department (CID), the Public Transport Security Command (TransCom) and the Police Intelligence Department (PID) responded to the case after the bank alerted on the robbery. 

It added that it managed to establish the suspect’s identity on the same day but found that he had already fled the country for Bangkok shortly after the crime was reported.

The police said it linked up with its Thai counterparts who helped to locate and arrest the suspect.

“Police did not release further details beyond the initial police statements for operational reasons to ensure the arrest operation was not jeopardised,” the police added.

The robbery last Thursday was the first successful heist here in more than a decade. 

In the last case before that in December 2004, a man went into a POSB branch in West Coast which had no security guard at the time, barred the door with a wooden plank and threatened a teller with a small knife. He managed to make off with about S$37,000, according to press reports at the time.

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