Hot Money: Bank of England recovers cash smuggled in knickers 25 years after thefts

It was almost the perfect crime: wads of notes systematically plundered from the Bank of England in an employee's underwear.

The ingenious theft, for which the alleged perpetrators escaped a criminal trial and never paid back a penny, inspired both an ITV film starring Caroline Quentin and a Hollywood remake with Diane Keaton and Katie Holmes.

But more than 25 years later, the Bank of England has finally recovered its money.

The minutes of a meeting of its Court of Directors, published this week, reveal that “following a property sale” the Bank had received “substantially all of the funds stolen in 1992” by staff working at its incineration plant in Debden, Essex.

The minutes add: “Court agreed that it would be right now to draw a line.”

The Bank had sued three couples for the return of around £600,000 in 1994.

The money, worth around £1.5million today, was stolen from the plant over a period of four years.

Three couples held responsible were said to have lived “the life of Riley” on the proceeds, “wildly above any conceivable legitimate means."

They were only caught when Peter Gibson, the husband of “prime mover” Christine Gibson, walked into the Ilford branch of an insurance society in 1992 and emptied out £100,000 in cash from a carrier bag. The police were duly alerted.

But with no specific evidence and no one willing to talk to the police, the CPS was unable to prosecute.

The Bank of England sued the Gibsons and two other ex-employees of the bank and their spouses for the return of the money with interest, seeking damages for breach of contract.

With little else to go on, it cited their high living as evidence.

The court heard that the old notes  were kept in cages with two padlocks. Mrs Gibson, then 44, a group leader at the plant, had the key for one lock and someone else for the other but she was sometimes able to switch them and access both.

She and her colleagues Michael Nairne, then 39, and Kenneth Longman, would remove some cash while another employee, Kevin Winwright, who was jailed for a year after he admitted stealing £170,000, distracted guards.

Judge Norman Rudd, sitting at the High Court, declared in 1994 that the employees had stolen from the Bank of England and ordered each couple to repay a share as well as the costs of the case but the cash was seemingly not forthcoming.