For the first year in its modern history, Denmark recorded a year without a bank robbery

More cash, more robberies: THE Denmark, for the first time in its modern history, it recorded a year without a bank robbery.

In 2000, the relatively peaceful country still recorded 221 armed robberies against banking institutions, or about two every three days.

But with the phasing out of cash in most bank branches, there have been fewer than ten robberies per year since 2017.

And in 2022, no robbery was recordedan unprecedented event according to a banking historian.

“It’s just fantastic. Because it’s an absolutely huge burden on the employees involved when that happens,” said Steen Lund Olsen, vice-president of Denmark’s main banking organisation, Finansforbundet.

“We cannot measure the extent of the emotional impact (of a robbery), as long as we have not experienced it ourselves,” emphasizes the banker.

In a Scandinavian society increasingly close to going cashless, Denmark’s main bank, Danske Bank, has only two bank branches, one in Copenhagen and the other in Aarhus, the country’s second-largest city, according to Finansforbundet.

As APE-MPE reminds, Scandinavia was the scene of one of the most famous bank robberies. In a central square in Stockholm, Sweden in August 1973, a robber had held four bank employees hostage for days after failing to steal the store’s loot.

But after their release, none of them wanted to testify against the thief, Jan-Erik Olsson, in a wave of sympathy that psychiatrists then christened it “Stockholm syndrome”.