1 Photo
The Force joined the INTERPOL Anti-Transnational Financial Crime Working Group cum Operation “First Light 2022” organised by the INTERPOL between March and May 2022. Officers from the Commercial Crime Bureau (CCB), the Liaison Bureau (LB) and Crime Kowloon East (CRM KE) represented the Hong Kong Police Force (HKPF) to attend the conclusion meeting of the Operation on May 31, 2022. The meeting was held online and coordinated by Superintendent Cheung Ting-fung, who has been seconded to INTERPOL General Secretariat in Lyon, France.
The INTERPOL Anti-Transnational Financial Crime Working Group is one of the designated projects of the INTERPOL Financial Crime and Anti-Corruption Centre. Since 2013, the Working Group has been committed to combating the increasingly prevalent transnational financial crimes while strengthening the partnership through regular meetings. Operation “First Light 2022”, with its main objective to interdict telecommunication and social engineering fraud by way of international collaboration and joint operation, was mounted between March and May 2022 and participated by a total of 76 INTERPOL member countries. Its scale is the largest since the launch of the initiative.
In the meeting, INTERPOL summarised the Operation results and introduced the latest trends of the targeted crimes. HKPF spared no effort in the Operation and arrested more than 500 persons with about US$28 million recovery or seizure. Chief Inspector of CRM KE Mok Tsz-wai shared in the meeting the insights and enforcement results achieved by HKPF during the operation. Chief Inspector of CCB Ngan Hoi-ian introduced the Anti-Deception Coordination Centre (ADCC) to the meeting and shared several successful cases of intercepting transnational crime proceeds with overseas judicial departments.
ADCC has been working closely with the INTERPOL and playing a significant role in its International Stop-Payment Mechanism. Under the Mechanism, ADCC successfully intercepted a considerable amount of fraudulent payments in two recent scams, both of which took place in May this year. In these two email scams, two Hong Kong companies were conned into transferring around HK$2.5 million and HK$8.2 million respectively to two separate British bank accounts. Officers of ADCC notified the police and the bank in the UK promptly through the Mechanism and successfully intercepted more than 90% of the money involved. Moreover, alerted in early May this year, ADCC succeeded in unveiling an unreported loan scam through collaboration with a local bank. The deceived money amounting to over HK$2 million was intercepted successfully.
