July unrest saw over R119m in ‘hard cash’ stolen from banks and ATMs

The South African Banking Risk Information Centre (Sabric) on Wednesday confirmed that at least 1227 ATMs and 310 bank branches were vandalised or destroyed in the unrest that engulfed KwaZulu-Natal and parts of Gauteng in July, which alarmingly also saw R119.4 million in physical cash being stolen.

Sabric says this amount does not include the cost of the damage to banking infrastructure, such as branches and ATMs.

It has also raised red flags that not all bank notes would have been dye stained when stolen and warned that these ill-gotten gains could fund organised crime.

“The theft of R119 400 243 in hard cash is very concerning,” says Sabric CEO Nischal Mewalall.

“Not all notes are dye-stained and millions in unsoiled notes will be injected back into the economy. This money is the proceeds of crime and there is now a war chest available to fund more organised crime, to corrupt more officials and to promote lawlessness,” he adds.

Read: The scale of the destruction

Mewalall also raised concerns around “the impact of intelligence failures and the state’s response to the eight consecutive days of civil unrest that resulted in unprecedented destruction of banking infrastructure in South Africa”.

According to Sabric, of the 1227 ATMs hit, 256 ATMs were breached or broken into using force and 82 in-branch safes were also breached.

Around 36 ATMs physically stolen from sites have not been recovered to date.

The organisation says that the effectiveness of South Africa’s anti-money laundering and counter financing of terrorism regime will be critical in detecting the individuals behind these crimes.

“Sabric therefore urges businesses to be stringent about cash threshold reporting, to not engage in facilitating suspicious transactions and immediately report any suspicious and unusual transactions to the Financial Intelligence Centre,” it adds.

Meanwhile, Banking Association South Africa (Basa) earlier this month reported that more than 1400 ATMs had been affected by the unrest.

“An indicative average replacement cost of an ATM in South Africa is R385 000, with additional installation costs,” Basa notes.

“These costs can vary greatly for any individual ATM and not every vandalised ATM will need to be replaced,” the association points out.

“Banks will likely have to rebuild almost 200 branches… The average indicative cost for rebuilding a branch is estimated to be R4.3 million. There will also be additional operational costs to get a branch back into full service,” it adds.

Full recovery of physical bank infrastructure is expected take a while and banks have encouraging their customers to use digital banking platforms to access their products and services.

Read: ‘Construction mafia’ disrupting post-unrest rebuilding effort