Dusseldorf (dpa / lnw) – The deployment of the special commission (Soko) BEGAS based in the Ministry of the Interior to “combat and investigate ATM blasts” will be extended again. This was announced by NRW Interior Minister Herbert Reul (CDU) on Thursday in the Interior Committee of the state parliament in Düsseldorf. Actually, the work of the Soko should end at the end of March.
Reul said that since May 2022 – when BEGAS started work – there have been significantly fewer blasts than in the second half of 2021. “And this year this trend will continue – with all the caution that is still required,” says Reul. The SOKO does not investigate itself, but is supposed to analyze and improve the work of the criminalists.
According to the State Criminal Police Office, there have been 30 attacks on ATMs in North Rhine-Westphalia since the beginning of the year. According to the Interior Ministry, nine suspects were arrested in February, two Germans and seven Dutch.
On Thursday, the investigators reported another hit against automatic sprinklers: in the afternoon, special police units stormed three residential buildings in Niederkassel, Cologne and Bonn. A suspect (47) was arrested. He is said to have been the head of a “predominantly Romanian group of criminals” who are said to have blown up nine ATMs in North Rhine-Westphalia and Rhineland-Palatinate since April 2021. The man was due to appear before a magistrate on Thursday.
