Cebu bankers tipped off about robbery plan

CEBU CITY — The Bankers Association of Cebu already had information that a bank robbery was in the offing even prior to last Friday’s heist in the Land Bank of the Philippines’ main branch on Osmeña Boulevard here, a former president of the group said.

Prudencio Gesta, former president of the bankers’ association, said Harry Uy, chairman of the group’s committee on security, brought up the tip about an impending robbery during their monthly board meeting recently.

Neither Gesta nor Uy would elaborate on the information.

All Gesta said in an interview with radio station dyLA was that the association had planned to bring up the matter with Cebu City police chief Cecil Ezra Sandalo this week.

But as things turned out, events overtook that plan.

Last Friday, while scores of people were passing by the Landbank branch during the early evening rush hour, six to 10 ski mask-wearing, armed men barged into the bank and caught the cashier just as she was about to place the day’s money in the vault and call it a day.

In all, the bank lost at least P22 million in Philippine and US currencies. Initially, the bank said it lost only P10 million.

In the light of the robbery, Gesta said the bankers’ association is urging its members to impose stricter security measures after an internal assessment showed that banks were not doing enough to secure themselves.

Gesta said the common observation is that most banks only have one or two guards who are often armed only with handguns.

It was the second holdup of the Landbank branch in three years. In 2001, motorcycle-riding armed men, who were also wearing ski masks, waylaid a bank vehicle transporting P4 million to the Landbank branch in Mandaue City.

In last Friday’s heist, the robbers pulled off the job in less than three minutes, escaping in a gray van through congested streets and dumping their vehicle in a residential compound on Sepulveda street less than five kilometers away.

A certain Julito Dungog, tagged by witnesses as the last one to get off the van, was arrested by police at the compound’s gate just as he was about to escape.

Dungog, however, protested his innocence, saying he was just a mechanic asked to go along for a test run with the men who rented the van from his employer and whom he did not know were robbers. — Freeman News Service