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Roger Coutts used a yard in Welling where some of the stolen money was found

WITH five men behind bars for Britain's biggest ever cash robbery, the hunt is on for the missing millions.

Garage owner Roger Coutts, aged 30, from The Green, Welling, was one of five people convicted of taking part in the raid on a Securitas depot in February 2006 and stealing £53m.

But more than two years after the raid, only £21m of the cash has been recovered.

Kent police recovered a large amount of cash, believed to be around £9m, during a raid on a car repair yard in Leigh Place, off Upper Wickham Lane, Welling, several months after the robbery.

The yard was used by Coutts.

Another £1.3m was left behind in one of the vans used by the robbers and the rest of the £21m was recovered during various other searches.

The cash could be difficult to trace, as it was all in used notes.

Now the Crown Prosecution Service has successfully made an application under the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 for details of the finances of the five convicted men.

Police experts will look at all the information to decide what benefits the men may have made from the proceeds of the robbery.

Once this has been decided, the Crown will make an application to the courts to confiscate any cash or property which it alleges resulted from the robbery.

Coutts, who owns a garage in Gravesend, was given an indeterminate sentence at Maidstone Crown Court in January this year after a seven-month trial, with a recommendation he serves at least 15 years.

He and three other men - Stuart Royle, aged 49, from Maidstone; Jetmir Bucpapa, aged 26, from Tonbridge, and Lea Rusha, aged 35, from Southborough, Kent - were found guilty of conspiracy to kidnap, conspiracy to commit robbery and conspiracy to possess a firearm at the time of committing an offence.

They received similar sentences.

A former worker at the depot, Ermir Hysenaj, aged 28, from Crowborough, East Sussex, was given a 20-year sentence for the same offences.

12:36pm Thursday 15th May 2008

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