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The INTERPOL Anti-Transnational Financial Crime Working Group is one of the designated projects of the INTERPOL’s Financial Crimes Unit. Since 2013, members of the Working Group have been committed to combating the increasingly prevalent transnational financial crimes while strengthening the partnership through regular meetings. In view of the pandemic, the meeting, coordinated by Superintendent Lau Ka-ho on secondment to the INTERPOL headquarters in Lyon, France, was conducted online for the first time on November 27.
On behalf of the Hong Kong Police Force (HKPF), officers of the Commercial Crime Bureau (CCB) and Crime Kowloon East (Crime KE) attended the meeting and exchanged work experience with crime managers from 32 regions. The meeting also concluded the Operation First Light 2019, a joint operation against telephone deception and social media deception, and discussed its way forward. CCB Chief Inspector Ngan Hoi-ian and Crime KE Chief Inspector Mok Tsz-wai introduced the latest trends and combating strategies of telephone deception in Hong Kong, as well as the crucial role of the International Stop-Payment Mechanism of the Anti-Deception Coordination Centre (ADCC) in the joint operation.
ADCC has been working closely with the INTERPOL to facilitate the interception of transnational crime proceeds with overseas judicial departments. Under the International Stop-Payment Mechanism, ADCC successfully intercepted a considerable amount of fraudulent payments in two recent scams. One of the cases took place in October this year, in which a Hong Kong company was conned into transferring around HK$7.8 million to a British bank account in an email scam. Officers of ADCC notified the Police and the bank in the United Kingdom through the mechanism in a timely manner, successfully recovering the entire sum to the company.
Another case took place in November this year. An employee of a Spanish company fell prey to an email scam and transferred funds totalling around $87 million on several occasions to numerous bank accounts in Hong Kong. After receiving the report, the INTERPOL contacted ADCC immediately and activated the International Stop-Payment Mechanism. Eventually, HK$52 million was successfully recovered to the victim’s bank account in Spain and a total of over HK$15 million in several local bank accounts was frozen.
