Chile copper trains ransacked in full-moon desert heists
On nights lit by a full moon, thieves leap from trucks onto trains as they roll through Chile’s Atacama Desert, before throwing 80-kilogram slabs of copper to the ground and disappearing into the dark.
It’s a tactic known as “the cat” and the robbers are “moles” because no one knows where they come from or where they hide their loot. What’s worse for the mines, the robberies are growing more common and more bold.
About 40 incidents were reported in the first half of this year, according to the prosecutor’s office in Antofagasta, up from just six in all of 2014. The thefts started to increase late 2017 as copper rose to the highest in more than two years. While prices have slumped in the past month, the thieves seem immune to the trade-war turmoil that’s rattling metal markets.
“Specialized gangs assaulting moving convoys has become common,” Valeria Ibarra, Antofagasta’s regional co-ordinator of public safety, said by telephone. “These are professionals. If they see that one company is taking security measures, they’ll just move on to the next one.”
The sheets of stolen copper cathode are taken to illegal yards and sold as scrap at a 30-per-cent discount to market prices, Ibarra said.
In June, thieves stole 2.5 metric tons of the metal, worth more than US$15,000 on the London Metals Exchange, from a moving train. Operators only noticed when they saw dust the gang’s vehicles left behind as they escaped, according to local newspaper El Mercurio de Calama.
A common target for the thieves is Antofagasta’s logistics unit Grupo FCAB, which owns and operates about 700 kilometres of railway lines used to transport cathode and semi-processed copper from mines to ports.
State-owned Codelco has also reported thefts, according to a statement by the prosecutor’s office in Antofagasta. BHP Billiton’s Spence and Escondida copper mines, Antofagasta’s Zaldivar, Mantos Copper’s Mantos Blancos and Yamana Gold’s El Penon have all reported smaller robberies, prosecutors said.
Antofagasta’s regional government recently set up a permanent working group that includes the police, government officials, FCAB and mining companies to address the issue and co-ordinate surveillance and investigations.
One of their first tasks will be to solve a mystery — why so many of the robberies happen on Thursdays. Government officials are wondering if it coincides with a change in shifts, or if it has to do with the proximity to the weekend.