“These are modern bank robberies,” the spokeswoman said. The banks had little money left. At vending machines, however, gangs can steal hundreds of thousands of euros relatively quickly.
Innocent citizens are also increasingly threatened, the spokeswoman said. Many ATMs are located in supermarkets or shopping streets. The perpetrators are extremely unscrupulous, as the spokeswoman said. “They’re not interested in people, they only care about money.”
Investigators have noted this development in many European countries, the spokeswoman said. This also included Germany, southern Europe and the Baltic States. Well-organized criminal gangs would specialize in these bomb attacks and would also train criminals in a targeted manner. Last year, investigators, with the help of Europol, even discovered a training center for automatic demolition near Utrecht.
Criminals often haunt an entire region in very fast cars and blow up various machines. They often operated internationally in neighboring countries. For example, about half of suspected attacks in Germany in 2021 came from the Netherlands.
Exact figures for all of Europe are not yet available as EU member states only report international cases to the European law enforcement authority. In the Netherlands, as many explosions had already been recorded in September as in the entire previous year. Amsterdam, in particular, was hit by strong explosions in residential areas.
According to Europol, France is successful in fighting the explosions. There, ATMs would be prepared with a special ink so that the stolen money would become unusable.