19 July 1976… Nice city of France… As usual, employees started arriving at the Societe Generale bank here in the morning. This bank was considered to be the most secure bank in the world at that time. Because here was the strongest vault for security. This was the reason that it was almost impossible to steal here.

Everyday the vault of the bank is unlocked here and the door is first opened. Then after that the employees would go inside the bank. That day also the employees started trying to open the vault of the bank. But it didn’t open. Let me tell you, the weight of this vault was about 20 tonnes. In the past also there was a problem in opening this door many times. Actually, the lock inside it used to get jammed often. Which was opened with the help of the vault making company.

Even that day the bank employees felt that its lock might have got jammed from inside. Then he informed the company that made the vault again. After half an hour the experts of the company reached the bank. He tried to open this door. But the surprising thing was that this time also this door did not open from him. He tried to open it several times. But failed.

On the other hand, there was a crowd of customers at the bank’s bar. Finally, after 3 hours, the bank employees and vault company experts decided to drill holes in the door to see where the problem is in opening the vault. There were no marks of any force entry on the door of the vault, so that it could be seen that someone had opened or tried to open it.

When a hole was seen inside the door with a heavy duty drill, everyone was shocked. Actually, someone had welded the door of the vault and closed it from inside. Seeing this scene, it was bound to surprise the bank employees. Because there was only one way to go inside the vault door. It neither had any skylight nor any window inside it. The door could be opened by unlocking the vault. So after all, who welded it from inside and made it monkey? This question was in everyone’s mind.

Then it was decided to go inside by making a big hole in the wall. But these walls were also very strong. It was very difficult to make holes in these walls. Iron was also attached to it. Well, after many hours of hard work, there was such a big hole in it that a person could easily go inside.

‘The whole bank was looted’

When the inside scene was seen, everyone’s senses were blown away. There was a robbery in the bank. Some lockers were broken and some were lying open. There, some alphabets were written on the wall with spray. Which were in French language. It was written on the wall ‘Sans armes sans haine et sans violence’ which means, without weapons, without hatred and without any violence.

Bank employees saw that there was a tunnel on the ground. Now the next task was of the police. The police had reached the spot. The dacoits fled with the money and gold in the bank. The tunnel he had built went into the city’s largest underground sewerage line. The police got a lot of stuff from the spot which was used by the robbers for the robbery. It also had 27 gas cylinders. With the help of which the dacoits lit the welding torch.

Not only that. He also used ventilation equipment for fresh air in the sewerage line. According to Guardian, this loot was more than 20 million dollars. Whose price in today’s era is equal to 110 million dollars i.e. 900 crore Indian rupees. It was the biggest bank robbery of that era.

A robber was caught because of his girlfriend

At that time, the whole world had come to know about this robbery in the bank of France. The police now started looking for the robbers who carried out this bank robbery. After 3 months i.e. in October 1976, the police got a huge lead. A member of the group of dacoits was caught on the tip of his own girlfriend. At first he was not agreeing. But when he was strictly questioned, he told about the whole gang.

When the rest of the gang members were caught, it was found that this gang used to do only small thefts. Earlier, the police could not digest that this gang could rob such a big bank. But later it came to know that its mastermind was someone else. The gang members named the mastermind as Albert Spaggiari. Albert was a photographer.

When the police arrested him, he confessed without any hesitation that he was the mastermind of the bank robbery. Albert told that he had earlier taken a locker in this bank. Then on the pretext of going there, he used to take photos of everything.

How did this robbery happen

He kept an alarm clock in his own locker. Whose alarm was set at night time. When there was no alert even after ringing the alarm, nor did any security alarm sound, then it was confirmed that there is no security system installed in the vault. Then he went to the city government office in the guise of an engineer and got the map of the city extracted from there. In this map, it was estimated where and how far the sewerage line is. Then he calculated and found that if he made a 26 feet tunnel in the sewerage line, he could go directly inside the bank.

A lot of hard work was needed for this work. So Albert contacted the gangster of the city for this and told him his plan. That gangster put his men on this task. It took two months to dig the tunnel because this work was being done without any machine. And this work could be done only at night.

kept robbing the bank for 27 hours

Then on the night of July 18, 1976, he finally entered the vault. For the next 27 hours, they looted very comfortably. There he also had lunch and dinner. Then looted and fled from the same tunnel. After this statement, the police produced Albert in the court. Albert confessed his crime there too. He was sentenced to life imprisonment for this.

The mastermind absconded in front of the judge

In the court, Albert wrote the details of where the looted money and gold was kept and gave it to the judge by writing a code word on a piece of paper. Said that he will only tell the judge about this. When the judge took him to the room and started asking about the code, Albert jumped from the window of the room as soon as he got the chance. There was already a bike parked there. Albert immediately sat in it and fled from there. He could not be caught even after lakhs of efforts by the police.

Many years later his interview was broadcast on an Italian channel. In this, he told that he was fond of finding treasures since the age of 12. And he fulfilled this hobby with bank robbery. No one knew where Albert went after this. Then on 8 June 1989, Albert died. Albert’s mother said that someone had kept his dead body outside the house.