Publications
Partners
While ATM attacks decreased by 9% overall, incidents involving explosives at ATMs increased by 20% in 2020, according to the latest crime statistics released by the South African Banking Risk Information Centre (Sabric) on Wednesday.
In addition to the rise in explosions, incidents of bank customers targeted before depositing cash at ATMs or after having withdrawn cash from ATMS also increased by a whopping 107% in 2020.
One possible reason for this was that due to Covid-19 regulations, fewer customers were allowed into bank branches at one time, and more people used ATMs to deposit cash, Sabric said.
Why more explosions?
Analysis by Sabric suggests that criminals were using explosives more often in a bid to target ATMs more successfully.
While robbers succeeded in 40% of their ATM attacks in 2019, this had jumped to 54% in 2020. Sabric analysis determined that the rise in successful thefts was due to criminals using more explosives or multiple explosions to gain access to safes.
Gauteng was the most targeted, with 36% of attacks taking place there. In distant second place was Mpumalanga and Limpopo (both 17%), followed by the North West (12%), the Eastern Cape (7%), Western Cape (6%), Free State (2%), KwaZulu-Natal (2%) and finally the Northern Cape (1%).
In Gauteng, ATM attacks increased by 22% to 117 incidents, while in the North West, the rate of attacks jumped by a staggering 264% to 40 incidents.
Mpumalanga recorded 53 incidents, although this was 38% lower than last year.
KwaZulu-Natal showed a reduction of 67% in incidents to six, the Eastern Cape a 44% reduction to 23 incidents and the Western Cape a reduction of 47% to 19 incidents.
Sabric said a notable decrease had been seen in the use of grinders when attacking ATMs, which attributed to the effective monitoring of ATMs for signs of a grinding in progress. Using cutting torches in ATM attacks also decreased.
