Status: 03.12.2022 09:06 a.m
Around 450 ATMs were blown up nationwide this year – a new record. According to a report, explosives were used more frequently, which also put local residents at risk.
According to one report, around 450 ATMs in Germany were blown up this year. This was a high for this crime, as reported by “Welt am Sonntag”. The newspaper referred to participants in the conference of interior ministers (IMK), which took place in Munich until Friday.
According to the report, Lower Saxony’s Interior Minister Boris Pistorius spoke of 500 “completed and attempted offenses” nationwide in 2022.
BDK: Residents are acutely endangered
Instead of gas mixtures, criminals would use explosives more often, according to the IMK newspaper. This is a new and worrying development. People in the vicinity of the crime scene are at acute risk, said the state chairman of the Association of German Criminal Investigators (BDK) in North Rhine-Westphalia, Oliver Huth. “Pedestrians have already been injured, metal parts smashed into children’s rooms and houses were no longer habitable,” said Huth.
According to the Federal Ministry of the Interior, the current development in Germany is being accelerated by a displacement effect from the Netherlands. Extensive preventive measures against such explosions have already been implemented there. Almost two thirds of the suspects registered by the BKA in 2020 and 2021 come from the Netherlands.
Cooperation with European neighbors
At their meeting, however, the interior ministers refrained from binding guidelines on protecting money for the banks. First of all, we continue to rely on voluntary actions. According to Bavaria’s Interior Minister and Chairman of the Conference of Interior Ministers, Joachim Herrmann, the closest possible cooperation between investigators, both nationwide and with our European neighbors, is important for a trend reversal.