A fake British aristocrat was convicted yesterday of playing a leading role in an audacious attempt to carry out the world’s biggest bank raid.

The gang of international criminals came close to stealing £229 million from a City bank by exploiting the high-tech security measures designed to protect money transfers. But the plot failed when a hacker into the system missed one set of numbers from an electronic form.

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Kevin O’Donoghue, the head of security at Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation, claimed that in 2004 he was forced to let two Belgian computer hackers into the Japanese bank’s City headquarters after threats to his family. Gilles Poelvoorde and Jan Van Osselaer installed spy software on executives’ computers that recorded their log-ins and passwords.