Despite some successful searches, the number of ATM explosions continues to increase in Lower Saxony and Germany. Crime experts see the banks as having an obligation to take more precautionary measures.
Osnabrück – you usually arrive in fast cars at night. Within minutes, the perpetrators have blown up an ATM, causing huge damage and endangering other people.
As quickly as they came, they left again. According to statistics from the Federal Criminal Police Office, the loot from ATM explosions in Germany was 17.1 million euros last year, 12.5 percent more than in 2019.
“Machine sprinklers from the Netherlands are a major threat to all of Western Europe,” says Michael Will, Head of Property Crime at Europol. Two thirds of the perpetrators come from the Netherlands. They are mostly young men, loose networks, not family ties, but ethnic groups who have known each other from an early age. “It’s hard to infiltrate these groups, hard to get information out of these groups,” Will reports. According to estimates by Europol, the group of perpetrators is around 500 people.
Recently, the Osnabrück police struck a big blow against the ATM sprinkler. Together with Dutch investigators, searches were carried out in the areas of Amsterdam, Utrecht and The Hague. Nine suspects were arrested and 23 alleged perpetrators were identified. Three suspects are to be extradited to Germany, the Osnabrück public prosecutor wants to bring them to court.
“These are perpetrators without any scruples,” says Osnabrück police chief Michael Maßmann. That already shows that they no longer blow up with gas, as they did a few years ago, but also use explosives. This also endangers bystanders who live in the same house where the ATM is installed or neighboring buildings.
The perpetrators also show no consideration for the escape trips. Often enough they speed away on the Autobahn at 280 km / h without lights. Just to protect the officials themselves and bystanders, a chase is rarely an option under such circumstances, says Maßmann. The perpetrators also accept deaths among their own people – in Meppen a man has already died in an accident in the city center.
Meanwhile, the crime scenes are not only in the border area with the Netherlands, but nationwide and Europe-wide, says Will. This has to do with the fact that the Netherlands improved its prevention measures a few years ago. The number of ATMs in the neighboring country has decreased. Access to the devices was made more difficult, and you can hardly find any machines hanging outside. And the amount of money in the machines has also decreased, says Will. “Why should I blow up a machine with 20,000 euros in the Netherlands when I can steal up to 500,000 euros in Germany?”
The banks in Germany have already done a lot in recent years to make their machines more secure, explains a spokeswoman for the German credit industry. This ranges from the closing of particularly endangered machines at night to the activation of intrusion reports and the use of anti-gas and fogging systems. Alone: The numbers are increasing. According to the BKA, 414 cases were registered last year, 18.6 percent more than in 2019 – a high since statistical recording began in 2005.
From Will and Maßmann’s point of view, the banks could do more to avoid the explosions. “As long as the economic damage is not too great, the banks will definitely accept it,” says Will. In the Netherlands, the government had succeeded in getting the banks to adopt stricter preventive measures. However, there are only a handful of big banks in the neighboring country and cash is no longer as widespread as in Germany.
The banking associations reject the accusation that they are not very interested in more effective preventive measures. The industry is working with the police, the insurance industry and manufacturers to give recommendations on security measures. “The economic damage is covered, but if the worst comes to the worst, the insurance premiums will rise,” says the spokeswoman. But the banks and savings banks also see that the ATM blasts are a danger for bystanders and their own employees.
From the point of view of the police, the banks’ preventive measures are not yet good enough. “I would be much more comfortable if the legislature would introduce regulations that define the standards of ATMs more clearly,” says the Osnabrück police chief Maßmann. His employer, Lower Saxony’s Interior Minister Boris Pistorius (SPD), also sees it that way. The safety standards in Germany would have to be raised – either voluntarily or on a legal basis. dpa
