The Economic and Organized Crime Office (EOCO) and Mobile Money Limited, a division of the world’s largest telecoms company, MTN, have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to increase their cooperation in the fight against mobile money fraud and other fraudulent online activities.
The MoU aims to encourage cooperation in areas like information sharing on trends and patterns of scams, creating training manuals to increase investigators’ capacity, coordinating investigations, and looking into ways to improve the effectiveness of creating robust dockets for prosecuting offender
Criminals
At a quick signing ceremony yesterday at the EOCO headquarters in Accra, the Chief Executive Officer of MTN Mobile Money Limited, Shiabu Haruna, initialed for his company while the Executive Director for EOCO, Commissioner of Police (COP) Maame Yaa Tiwa Addo Danquah, initialed for hers.
Mrs. Addo Danquah declared before the agreement was signed that EOCO was dedicated to working with all stakeholders to stay one step ahead of criminals.
“If the criminals are working together, what about those of us who are fighting them,” she asked.
She disclosed that the Economic and Organized Crime Office (EOCO) has successfully obtained convictions for certain criminals involved in SIM swap fraud, with assistance from telecommunication service providers and the banking industry.
“The conviction should send a signal to perpetrators that you cannot get away with such crimes,” she said.
She claimed that while using digital financial services and transactions had “made life simple for us in terms of making payments and transferring money, some criminals have taken advantage of that to swindle unwary individuals.
“If the criminals are working together, what about those of us who are fighting them,” she asked.
She disclosed that the Economic and Organized Crime Office (EOCO) has successfully obtained convictions for certain criminals involved in SIM swap fraud, with assistance from telecommunication service providers and the banking industry.
“The conviction should send a signal to perpetrators that you cannot get away with such crimes,” she said.
She claimed that while using digital financial services and transactions had “made life simple for us in terms of making payments and transferring money, some criminals have taken advantage of that to swindle unwary individuals.
How do we stop them?”
According to the MOU, she stated that Mobile Money Limited will exchange information about vulnerabilities and things to watch out for when developing new products with EOCO in order to enable investigators know what to watch out for when handling cases. EOCO would also receive training support from Mobile Money Limited.
Protection
Mr. Haruna claimed that the collaboration would aid the company in better safeguarding its clients from national internet fraud.
“Mobile money has become an integral part of our lives as individuals and businesses but we are saddled with issues of fraud that have permeated the services.
We will use the partnership to combat the increasing rate of financial crimes,” he said.
He pointed to a recent Bank of Ghana report on digital financial services fraud and claimed it indicated an increase in cases recorded between 2021 and 2022.
According to the research, a sizeable sum of GH 26 million was lost via Electronic Money Issues (EMIs), representing a roughly 103% increase in financial crime.
“This shows that there is some value that our customers are losing to organised and financial crime and it is our responsibility to work with law enforcement agencies to ensure that the perpetrators are brought to book,” said Mr Haruna.
He said the two organisations would work together to fight emerging crimes in relation to financial crime.
“As a leading provider of digital financial service, we owe it to our customers to collaborate and support the fight against crime and ensure our customers have a safe environment to conduct their business and personal transactions,” he said.