Banks: professional association calls for retrofitting of ATMs

banks
Professional association calls for retrofitting of ATMs

In view of the large number of ATMs that have been blown up in Germany, the Association of German Criminal Investigators (BDK) is calling for the devices to be retrofitted. “So far, the federal government has not managed to lay down legal rules on how and where the machines have to be set up and how they can be secured. Such retrofits are expensive for banks and they are happy to avoid these costs,” said Oliver Huth, NRW- State Chairman of the BDK of the German Press Agency.

ATMs would have to be video-monitored around the clock, filled with less cash or equipped with colored cartridges so that the money would be unusable in the event of a blast, Huth demanded.

The Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) does not yet have any final figures for the past year; around 500 attempted and completed ATM blasts are expected in Germany, a spokeswoman said. “We are therefore expecting a new high in the number of cases in Germany in 2022.”

In 2021 there were 392 acts – the previous maximum was 414 cases in 2020. According to the BKA, the numbers have been statistically recorded since 2005.

According to the Federal Criminal Police Office, explosives are now being used in the blasting instead of gas mixtures, which means that perpetrators are more successful. The crimes result in even greater property damage and more danger to people.

Many of the alleged perpetrators come from the Netherlands – according to the BKA, a little more than half of the suspects came from the neighboring country in 2021. Blown-up ATMs are a problem, especially in the neighboring federal states of North Rhine-Westphalia and Lower Saxony – according to the two state criminal investigation offices, there were 250 crimes in the federal states last year – around half of the nationwide cases.

dpa