1970-01-01 02:00:00
Robbery and theft of telecommunications cables grew in Brazil and reached a record level in the first six months of 2023. The dynamics associated with this type of crime have changed and now also involve the companies’ own employees. From January to June, almost 2,900 km of wiring were stolen in the country, equivalent to 16 km per day.
The volume is sufficient to cover the distance between the cities of São Paulo and Belém, in Pará, and exceeds by 23.5% the occurrences recorded in the same period last year, when companies in the sector recorded a loss of 2,300 km of cables. The data was gathered by Conexis Brasil Digital, an entity that represents the main telephone and internet operators in the country.
Over the past year, according to the entity, wiring theft affected 7 million people across the country, with the loss of telephone, internet and pay TV services.
“In addition to the immediate loss, which is the loss of service, the company has to make new investments to recover the network, when it could use this resource to bring connections to other locations”, says Daniela Martins, director of institutional and government relations at Conexis .
More than a fifth of the incidents mapped by the entity were registered in São Paulo, a state that has the largest share of the consumer market and where this crime increased above average. From January to June, 664 km of wires were stolen, an increase of 35% compared to the same period in 2022.
Next comes Paraná, where telecommunications companies recorded a loss of 591 km of wiring in the first half of the year. Third in the ranking, Bahia is the Brazilian state in which this type of crime grew the most from one year to the next — 296 km of stolen cables were recorded in the first half of the year, an increase of 188.5%.
Copper is one of the main materials used in wiring for telecommunications services and drives criminal activity due to its high market value. Currently, a kilo of the metal is priced at approximately R$40, according to the London metal exchange.
According to delegate Paulo Eduardo Pereira Barbosa, from Deic (State Department of Criminal Investigations), the dynamics associated with wire theft have changed in the state of São Paulo. “It is normally attributed to people in vulnerable conditions, who commit these crimes to feed their drug addiction. But cases in which telephone company employees themselves are involved have increased,” he says.
Since February, the division commanded by Barbosa has arrested 56 people for stealing copper wires. Of these, he says, 29 were employees of telecommunications companies or contractors.
“They have privileged information, they know where the wires that have the greatest commercial value are”, says the delegate, who attributes the increase in theft cases to the actions of these gangs. “These guys use a company car, with three or four people, and pull 300 meters of wire easily”, adds Barbosa.
At the end of September, a fake telephone equipment maintenance team was caught red-handed in the south zone of São Paulo with 118 meters of stolen copper, material valued at R$36,800. The criminals were in uniform and even had a vehicle with the logo of a company in the sector to disguise the illicit activity. Five people were arrested.
Currently, the 3rd Division of Investigations into Crimes Against Property is investigating around ten metallurgical companies for receiving the material. Companies are responsible for processing illegally obtained copper and reinserting the metal into the regular market.
Regarding employees involved in theft and diversion of wires, Conexis states that “the operators reaffirm their commitment to collaborating with the competent authorities to combat and prevent theft and theft of telecommunications cables. The companies are committed to combating these actions, which includes cooperation with security forces and regulatory bodies and educational actions with employees and customers to identify suspicious activities”.
Wire theft, which is growing especially in large urban centers, does not only impact telecommunications services.
Until April alone, the CET (Traffic Engineering Company) recorded 2,223 traffic light failures in the capital of São Paulo as a result of this crime, the majority in the center. The amount is equivalent, on average, to 18 breakdowns per day, which further hamper traffic in the city. According to the company, there are cases in which more than 12 hours of work are required to replace the cables and restore service.
Services such as rail transport, street lighting and electricity distribution are also subject to interruptions due to theft and wire theft.
According to the concessionaire Enel São Paulo, from 2018 to 2022 this type of occurrence increased by more than 1,000% and continues to increase this year: until July, the company recorded more than 9,000 wire thefts in its aerial network in Greater São Paulo, a number that exceeds the cases registered in the same period in 2022 by almost 30%. The company serves around 18 million customers in the capital and in 23 other municipalities in the metropolitan region.
The worsening of statistics led to the opening of a CPI (Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry) at the São Paulo City Council. According to councilor Coronel Salles, the commission’s rapporteur, municipal legislation makes it difficult to inspect scrap metals, which are still among the main recipients of metal.
“By the end of October we will present two proposals for legislative change. The first is to no longer allow the opening of new scrapyards in the expanded center region of the capital. The other is that, when illicit activity is found in these companies recycling, businesses have their operating license suspended for up to 90 days, so that the activity can be regularized”, says the councilor.
In a note, the City of São Paulo said that, to inhibit criminal actions, it adopts measures such as raising traffic light controllers and concreting and welding the covers of wiring junction boxes. According to the municipal administration, the concessionaire responsible for the city’s public lighting “is replacing the wiring of traffic light cables in the city from copper to aluminum at the points with the greatest recurrence of thefts, since the material has a lower resale value on the parallel market “.
Regarding the inspection of scrap metals, the Ricardo Nunes (MDB) management states that the work is carried out by sub-prefectures, which check documentation and can seal establishments if any license is in disagreement with current legislation.
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