14
EMEA INCIDENT INTELLIGENCE
LOCKDOWN INSPIRES ORGANISED CRIME GROUPS WITH €85 MILLION OF PRODUCTS STOLEN FROM SUPPLY CHAINS IN 46 COUNTRIES IN THE FIRST SIX MONTHS OF 2020
The activities of cargo thieves in Europe, the Middle East & Africa (EMEA) in the first half of 2020 were most certainly curtailed by the COVID-19 lockdowns across the region but Organised Crime Groups (OCGs) still identified ways to steal products worth tens of millions of euros from supply chains, including high value shipments of Protective Personal Equipment (PPE).
Data shared by law enforcement agencies with TAPA’s Incident Information Service (IIS) for the first six months of the year was also interrupted as police agencies diverted resources to support national lockdown protocols. Consequently, TAPA is yet to receive full cargo theft intelligence for this period from several of the known national hotspots for freight crime in the region.
Nonetheless, any hopes that restrictions on the movements of people and vehicles during the height of the pandemic would virtually eradicate cargo losses were quickly dispelled. Initial analysis of the January-June incident data supports the view that many small-time, opportunist cargo thieves may well have opted to ‘stay home’ to avoid the higher level of scrutiny of public movements but for the more strategic OCG operations, this
was not only a time of ‘business as usual’ but also one which presented new and lucrative opportunities.
For the first 182 days of 2020, TAPA’s IIS database has so far recorded 3,278 cargo theft incidents with a total loss of €85,166,106 for the 2,154 or 65.7% of these crimes reporting a value.
Over €52 million of this total was attributed to the 96 major incidents, those with individual losses of goods worth €100,000 or more. The average value of products stolen in these cases was €542,761.
Nine TAPA IIS product categories impacted by major crimes produced seven-figure loss totals for the six months:
• Computers/Laptops - €9,934,812 • Pharmaceuticals - €5,940,859
• No Load (Theft of truck and/or trailer) - €5,673,144
• Tobacco - €5,411,545 • Clothing & Footwear - €4,405,799 • Phones - €4,186,877 • Food & Drink - €2,987,254 • Cosmetics & Hygiene - €2,620,317 • Sports Equipment - €1,144,805
The 10 highest value incidents all involved seven-figure financial losses:
• €8,788,000 – on 9 March, thieves conducted a violent attack on a truck carrying computers/laptops shortly after it left a Services 3rd Party Facility in Nuneaton in Warwickshire, UK
• €5,000,000 – on 6 April, two million face masks and other PPE equipment was taken from an Origin Facility warehouse in Santiago de Compostela in northwest Spain. All the products were removed from their protective plastic boxes by the thieves to hide the origin of the theft
• €5,000,000 – The theft of 50 tractor units from a transport company by a rival operator. Police intercepted seven of the vehicles on 7 April as they were being driven from Murcia to Madrid to be sold. The thieves had replaced the original Bulgarian licence plates with cloned Spanish plates
• €3,295,500 – Thieves stole an unattended HGV semi-trailer and its load of tobacco from a location in Daventry in the East Midlands region of the UK on 27 May
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