Police authorities in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia have intensified efforts to investigate a major bank robbery in the city of Gelsenkirchen, with 234 investigators currently involved. Local Interior Minister Herbert Reul stated at an emergency session of the state parliament's internal affairs committee that there is a high level of readiness among investigators to participate in the case. "Our goal is to clarify the circumstances of this crime," he said. Reul explained that the bank's vault and an adjacent archive room contained around 500,000 scattered items, each of which must be carefully examined. "Every item could carry important evidence," he noted, adding that investigators are now analyzing 10,000 hours of video footage, equivalent to 8 terabytes of data. "We don't yet know how much of it will actually be useful," he said. Unknown perpetrators managed to enter the bank at the end of December through an underground garage and drilled a large hole in the wall to access the vault. Most of the 3,250 safe deposit boxes in the savings bank branch in the Bor district were opened. The exact value of the stolen goods is still being determined. Initial estimates pointed to tens of millions of euros, but investigators now believe the losses could amount to hundreds of millions.
