A man held up the French bank Credit Agricole-Indosuez on Norodom Boulevard on Tuesday evening, shooting a bank employee and making off with hundreds of thousands of dollars, police said.
Ek Kreth, chief of municipal judicial police, said the suspect is a 23-year-old security guard who had been employed at the bank for several years.
The robbery occurred at about 5 pm Tuesday, after the bank closed, Ek Kreth said.
Between $300,000 and $700,000 was believed to have been taken, according to Mok Chito, chief of foreign police for the municipality. He said the thief would soon be caught.
“We know who he is and we are now following to arrest him,” Mok Chito said, adding that the robbery appeared to be the result of an internal bank dispute.
One foreign employee, a Filipino-Australian, was shot in the legs during the robbery and was to be evacuated for medical treatment in Singapore, he said.
According to the French-language Cambodge Soir, witnesses said the overexcited suspect opened fire on a fellow guard and forced the victims into the vault where the employees handed him money bags. The suspect made his escape by motorbike.
The police have already retrieved $300,000 from the house of a friend of the suspect, the paper reported.
The police have put on alert by places where the suspect might hide, and have also dispatched officers to the suspect’s birthplace to investigate further.
It is unclear whether the suspect had accomplices on the scene, or whether he was able to take advantage of the other security guards’ negligence, according to Cambodge Soir.
Bank managers have refused to comment on the robbery, saying the case is still under investigation. The bank was closed on Wednesday.
(Reporting by Pin Sisovann)
