While there were still 221 armed bank robberies in relatively peaceful Denmark in 2000, there have been fewer than 10 since 2017 and finally none by 2022, as the banking association Finansforbundet announced on Tuesday.
Cash has been steadily losing importance in the Scandinavian country for years and hardly plays a role in everyday life. The Corona crisis has accelerated this trend. As a result, the country’s banks have hardly any cash reserves in their branches. In March last year, the central bank announced that cash would account for only 12 percent of payments by 2021, compared to 23 percent in 2017.
The banking union welcomed the development, as armed robbery is a “significant burden for the workers involved”. Those who have not experienced something like this can hardly imagine the emotional consequences. Many of those affected still suffer from insomnia, anxiety or restlessness to this day.
Scandinavia and more precisely the Swedish capital Stockholm is nevertheless the scene of one of the most famous bank robberies ever. In August 1973, after a botched bank robbery, a man held four employees of the institute hostage for days. However, after the liberation, no one wanted to testify against the perpetrator – the phenomenon is considered the birth of the term “Stockholm Syndrome”.
(SDA)