CARGO CRIME DATA: HY/2021


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Despite only 355 or 22.8% of incidents stating a value, the financial loss for the half-year still produced a substantial total of €72,265,605 or an average of €399,257 every 24 hours for the 181 days in this period, including an average loss for major crimes of €1,453,691 per incident.


Cargo theft data for incidents in the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region reported to TAPA’s Incident Information Service (IIS) in May included the highest value crime of the year so far, the theft of €50,000,000 of gold and diamonds from a facility in Amsterdam in the Netherlands on 19 May.


The crime was made even more high profile as the robbery of the facility in Amsterdam and subsequent police chase was captured on film by members of the public and shared by Dutch media outlets. During the early afternoon attack, masked men with machine guns jumped out of cars outside the premises of a leading precious metals trading company in order to attack an armoured truck. Photographs by local residents show one of the robbers standing guard and firing several shots into the air while others completed the theft.


After fleeing the scene of the crime, the offenders headed north on the N247 provincial road, with Dutch police now in hot pursuit by road and in the air using a police helicopter.


Reports said shots were fired between law enforcement officers and the robbers, who ended up in Broek in Waterland in the province of North Holland. At one point, the thieves were seen racing along bicycle paths at 60-70kph. One of the getaway cars came to an abrupt stop after crashing through a fence into a garden and ramming into a tree. Images from the property’s security camera showed the suspects fleeing into the adjacent meadow. Two other vehicles used by the robbers are believed to have been set on fire as the thieves tried to escape on foot.


The quick response of Dutch Police led to the immediate arrests of six suspects, while another was killed trying to escape. An eighth person was arrested a few hours later on the A16 near Rotterdam. After successfully recovering the €50m haul, it was transferred to an unknown location onboard a police truck.


€3,307,214 - Phones


In Kelvin in South Africa’s Gauteng province on 3 March, police responded after receiving


information of a planned armed robbery of a truck transporting a consignment of Phones. Arriving at the vehicle’s location, officers came under fire from the suspects and retaliated. Fourteen offenders were subsequently arrested, while others reportedly escaped on foot. Sadly, a security guard was fatally shot during the attack.


€2,107,093 – Cash


Violent offenders hijacked a cash-in-transit truck west of Harare in Zimbabwe on 7 January after the driver and two security guards took the extraordinary decision to offer a lift to six passengers, one of whom pulled a gun on the driver and guards and forced the truck to pull over. The offenders then loaded seven cash boxes into a waiting car and escaped. Media reports suggested the


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