SAO PAULO, Brazil — Brazilian authorities said yesterday they have arrested a man accused of participating in one of the world’s largest bank heists.Police received an anonymous tip and arrested Marcio Rafael Pierre, 32, in the middle-class neighbourhood of Mooca on Friday afternoon, said a spokeswoman for the Sao Paulo state public safety department who declined to give her name citing department policy.

She said that during an interrogation Pierre confessed to his role in the heist. She did not provide further details.

In August 2005, about 10 men tunnelled under a city street and stole more than US$70 million in cash from a branch of Brazil’s central bank in the northern city of Fortaleza, 1,550 miles northeast of Sao Paulo.

So far, about 10 suspects have been jailed in connection with the heist, but police believe others are still at large and only US$8 million of the money has been recovered.

A few months after the heist, its suspected mastermind, Luis Fernando Ribeiro, was kidnapped and murdered even though his family paid two million reals (US$890,000) for his release.

Authorities believe that the First Capital Command, one of Brazil’s most notorious organised crime groups, was behind the robbery.

The group, known by its Portuguese initials PCC, is based in Sao Paulo prisons and led by convicts who issue their orders via cell phones and instructions given to their attorneys and visiting relatives.

Last week, a man accused of being one of the robbers was found dead on a remote ranch in Sao Paulo state. Anselmo Oliveira Magalhaes, 32, was found by police with a broken neck and his hands and feet tied. His body was inside a 75-feet well at the ranch.

The bodies of two other men were found in the well, but it remains unclear if they had any connection to the bank heist.

Magalhaes was arrested shortly after the robbery and police said he confessed to helping build the tunnel that led to the bank. He was freed pending trial.

Last year, several abductions were linked to the robbery, including the kidnapping of a suspect’s sister-in-law.

It was the biggest heist in history until thieves stole more than US$90 million from a security warehouse in London last year.