honie’s confession

has been called, without exaggeration, as the bloodiest bank robbery in the country’s history. Ten dead, all methodically shot in the head. And the killers literally got away with murder, at least for the time being, and with an estimated P9 million to P12 million in cash. That’s an average of P1 million for every dead body. So successful was the heist that the robbers left behind millions more at the vault and scattered around the bank.

Additional details of the robbery have recently surfaced. According to the Philippine Star:

Based on the logbook, it was established that the robbery took place between 8 a.m. to 9 a.m., or an hour before the RCBC-Barangay Pulo, Cabuyao branch could open for business following the arrival of several supposed policemen aboard a white Toyota Revo without license plates at little past 8 a.m.

The logbook also contained the name of the supposed policemen led by a certain Inspector Alvarez. The guard on duty then was Aguilando Baltazar. Baltazar was among those executed by the suspects.

Also in the same entry, one of the supposed policemen even deposited his M16 rifle with the guard on duty.

When Task Force probers checked the PNP list of personnel, it was found that the names listed in the bank’s security logbook were all fictitious.

Bolstering suspicions that the men who introduced themselves as police were the perpetrators of the crime was the testimony of a lady client who witnessed one of the suspects clad in a police jacket pull one client, who was still outside, inside the bank.

After seeing this, the lady client called the attention of the Laguna Industrial Park authorities who in turn called up the Cabuyao police.

The time of the crime was also confirmed to have been between 8 to 9 a.m. last Friday, because as per the bank’s computer security alarm, which is connected to the RCBC head office, the door of the bank opened at exactly 8 a.m.

“Nobody can enter the bank during night time, not even the security guards because the establishment is fitted with a security alarm which if opened will automatically register at the computer of the RCBC’s head office in Makati,” a member of the Task Force RCBC said.

It was certainly a professional job. The perpetrators executed their plan with military (or police) precision, disabling the branch’s security equipment, herding the bank personnel inside, including an unlucky client’s representative, and patiently waiting for the vault’s time lock to deactivate just before the usual opening time. They grabbed the cash. Then they went about systematically slaughtering all possible witnesses, which was everyone inside the bank who wasn’t a member of the robbery gang. Afterwards, they drove away in one of victim’s vehicles with their loot. All without being detected.

A smooth bank robbery, just like in the movies. Except that this is real life. And it involves a mass killing, something which puts it beyond the pale. It has been described, rightfully so, as the “handiwork of the devil”.

The brutality of the crime has scarred the national psyche. The rationale seems obvious: kill all possible witnesses, the better to evade the so-called long arm of the law. Still, the blatant inhumanity of the act is almost incomprehensible. This is an aberration, even for country where violence is commonplace. In a taxi ride I took yesterday, the driver spent the better part of a half hour explaining why and how the bank robbers should die, should he get his hands on them.

Consider Baghdad, acknowledged as the bank robbery capital of the world. A typical bank robbery has been described thus:

The attack had been planned with military precision. Twelve men, masked and carrying Kalashnikov assault rifles stormed into the al-Sanik branch of the Bank of Baghdad, disarmed the guards, tied them up and then terrified the staff by firing into the ceiling. About $800,000 (£400,000) in US dollars and Iraqi dinars was grabbed before the gang drove away in three cars, untroubled by the many checkpoints in the area.

Amid the bombs and gunfire, there is one “industry” is doing remarkably well – Baghdad is now the bank robbery capital of the world.

Four years after “liberation” and the coming of the free market, Iraq is almost entirely a cash economy with a mushrooming group of private banks and vast sums of money being moved daily across the country.

But in all the stories of bank robberies in Iraq, there are remarkably few casualties. Even though, as we are reminded every time we see the news, one thing Iraq is not short of is men with guns.

Even in the U.S., where bank robberies have a long history as part of Wild-West lore, fatalities are rare. And Americans are not gun-shy, the right to bear arms being a constitutional right. But they’re clear about what they want: Just the money, please, and no one will get hurt.

And its plain why the RCBC massacre is so horrifying.

These were ordinary people, very much like us, mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, sons and daughters. Ordinary people trying to make a living in an occupation which, though not without risks, would normally not put them on a collision course with mass murderers. In fact, they are instructed and trained not to be confrontational, to hand over the money in the event of an armed robbery and to avoid looking at the criminals’ faces. But they were killed anyway.

No one can enter a bank now without a shiver of fear and without recalling, consciously or not, the fate of the RCBC robbery victims. It could be me next time. Or my spouse. Or my children.

Its not an overstatement to say that crimes like these undermine the banking system and the economy as a whole. No person or institution is safe. Even if you play by the rules (which the RCBC staff apparently did, as there were no overt signs of resistance or struggle; the phrase “like lambs to slaughter” jumps to mind) you will still be killed.

ORIGINAL POST : http://thewarriorlawyer.com/2008/05/20/the-rcbc-bank-robbery-and-its-aftermath/