Witness

In August, 2005, a gang of robbers tunnelled their way into a Brazilian bank vault in a heist straight out of the movies.Three months before, the thieves had set up a landscaping business, Grama Sintetica - or Synthetic Grass, from a house close to the Banco Central in Fortaleza. But it was a plot to disguise their real activity.Working in shifts, they dug an 80 metre tunnel from the house, under a neighbouring street and into the vault before escaping with more than 160million reais, then the equivalent of $70million.Antonio Celso Dos Santos, then a federal police chief, was one of the detectives who tracked down the gang. He spoke to Jane Wilkinson about the investigation.Eye-witness accounts brought to life by archive. Witness History is for those fascinated by the past. We take you to the events that have shaped our world through the eyes of the people who were there. For nine minutes every day, we take you back in time and all over the world, to examine wars, coups, scientific discoveries, cultural mom