BBC The Gold: The Inside Story – how much was stolen in the Brink’s-Mat robbery?

Forty years ago thieves stole a large amount of gold from a warehouse near London’s Heathrow airport. The property targeted in 1983 was operated by Brink’s-Mat, a former joint venture between US security company Brink’s and the London-based MAT Transport.

Police were in a race against time to catch those responsible and recover the gold before it was smelted, disguised and sold back on the open market, fuelling criminal enterprise on an unprecedented scale. It was billed as “the crime of the century,” and its investigation lasted until 1992, marking the longest in British history.

BBC One’s serial dramatisation of the robbery aired its final episode on Sunday (March 19), and the broadcaster is set to air a documentary that hears from the detectives who worked on the case. Airing on BBC One on Monday, The Gold: The Inside Story will see Detective Chief Superintendent Brian Boyce, who led the investigation, and DC Tony Yeoman speaking on film for the first time since the robbery almost 40 years ago.

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They will disclose the challenges they faced and the strategy they used in the hunt for the gold. Speaking in the documentary, DCS Boyce says: “Our task was far greater than just arresting the robbers, we hadn’t even recovered the dust of the gold.

“We had to work extremely hard, follow the trail and recover as much of the gold as possible.”

Using archive footage and eyewitness testimony, the documentary will detail the cat-and-mouse chase across borders and continents and the tracking of a corrupt network who helped to launder the money. But exactly how much was stolen in the Brink’s-Mat robbery?

Discover,