Two people walk in front of the headquarters of a BBVA bank branch in Santiago de Chile Cristobal Olivares (Bloomberg)
Chilean engineer José Reyes, 42, of medium height and resident of downtown Santiago, paid $310 late last year for a car to pick him up at his home and two unarmed bodyguards to accompany him to withdraw about $10,000 from the bank Bank. . He made the decision, he comments over the phone, after two acquaintances were robbed while leaving a bank branch, a criminal phenomenon in which the attackers would tag a person in the office and violently steal their money as soon as they left.
This crime is not new, but the Chilean Investigative Police (PDI) say it has grown to record numbers and complexity since organized gangs have been practicing it. Gabriel Boric’s government has sounded the alarm over the emergence of “bank attendants” because there is no law specifically regulating them. The government has pledged to implement a private security law in 2023 and meanwhile strengthen scrutiny over those providing these services.
Reyes, who works as a prevention manager for a plastics company, has engaged the services of security firm As Group. César Bustos, General Manager of the brand, comments that in 2019 only 18 customers booked the bank escort service. In 2020, 48 people did it; in 2021 200; and 245 in 2022. At the same time, the crime called “leaving a bank” has also increased. Between 2017 and 2021, the annual average was 400 cases. By September 2022, the number had already surpassed 500, according to metropolitan prosecutors, and the year was forecast to end with more than 700.
Deputy Commissioner Joel Soto of the North Central Robbery Investigation Brigade explains over the phone that thieving is a highly sought-after crime because it is so easy to get hold of large sums of money. It clarifies that this is not an imported crime, but that the way it works has changed. “Before, the person followed the victim, punctured the tire of his car, offered him help and stole it. It was a theft. Now it’s a crime with the use of guns, violence, run by gangs,” affirmed Soto.
As Group’s Bustos points out that prior to the October 2019 social outburst, the profile of escort clients were contractors from Santiago’s wealthiest sectors, who went to the bank at the end and beginning of the month to withdraw salaries from a company . Now he says they request their services every day of the month and in the most popular parts of the capital, such as the municipalities of San Miguel, Pudahuel or Colina.
The most basic service costs around $125 and consists of an attendant accompanying the customer on foot. The most expensive is $750, involving three escorts and three vehicles. It has a prior check of the bank branch, different routes of passage depending on the risk, an attendant who supervises before and after the operation is carried out in the bank and high visibility so that the customer feels “as protected as possible” and has a deterrent effect. Defense security works differently. This company dresses their escorts as closely as possible to the social environment in which the bank is located.
Defense Security general manager Marco Price insists one shouldn’t have a “Hollywood” vision of bodyguards. “These aren’t armed bodyguards going into battle against several and eliminating 15. In my company, those are people who go unarmed and who work on the basis of intelligence and evasion management and knowing where to go at what time and where is the best place to go, and they have vulnerabilities,” he says over the phone.
99% of the more than 200 bodyguards in the As Group are former armed forces agents, according to Bustos. Ex-military personnel, like ex-police officers, have the right to bear arms. “If the ex-agent is attacked during the proceedings, he can use his weapon under the law of legitimate defense. If they attack the person being escorted, there will be a legal vacuum that we need to talk about,” says Bustos.
An unregulated service
The Undersecretary of State for Crime Prevention, Eduardo Vergara, states in writing that currently the activity of “private escorts” is not only unregulated, but also falls into a “market without regulations that does not ensure quality standards, training or protocols of action or minimum requirements for those who act as escorts to provide security for those who hire them, ultimately affecting people’s security.” As they work to push through the processing of a privacy security law, Vergara warns that they are trying to tighten scrutiny on those who who have permission to exercise private security, such as corporations and security guards, so that they “keep on doing their jobs”.
The Boric government is working on a solid security agenda, as Interior Ministry Undersecretary Manuel Monsalve detailed in EL PAÍS. Initiatives such as the Homicide Prevention Center or the first organized crime policy seek to reduce citizens’ feelings of insecurity, which have reached their highest level in two decades.
According to the annual report of the Center for Crime Studies and Analysis of the Undersecretary for Crime Prevention, released two weeks ago, the rate of crimes of larger social context increased by 44.6% in 2022 compared to 2021. The crimes with the largest increases were robberies with violence or intimidation (63.1%) – this category includes leaving a bank – surprise robbery (61.2%) and robbery in an uninhabited place (56.4%).
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