In an interview with The Financial Times’ home affairs correspondent James Boxell, published in this morning’s edition of the newspaper, Herbert confirms that the Home Office will now lead a project to create a single Economic Crime Agency.
“As the Government department entrusted with the role of crime-fighting, it’s only right that the Home Office should be focused on economic crime,” explained the minister. “There has not been that focus until now.”
According to Boxell’s first class report, Her Majesty’s Treasury had initially planned to bring together the law enforcement functions of the Serious Fraud Office, the Financial Services Authority (FSA) and the Office of Fair Trading within the proposed Economic Crime Agency.
However, the FSA won a rearguard action to retain its powers which are focused squarely on policing insider-dealing.
Consultation involving key Stakeholders
As the lead Government department, the Home Office will now work with the Attorney General’s office and others including the Ministry of Justice, the Treasury and the Cabinet Office to establish the parameters and function of the new agency.
To this end, a consultation process involving key Stakeholders will take place in due course.
According to Boxell’s report, that consultation procedure will include discussions on whether the Economic Crime Agency should be “folded” into the proposed National Crime Agency (NCA), and whether or not it should retain powers of prosecution as well as powers of investigation.
The NCA is set to replace the Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA), heralded as “Britain’s answer to the FBI” when it was launched by New Labour back in 2006 with the aim of tackling organised crime and protecting the UK’s borders.
The policing minister explained that “the initial elements of the Economic Crime Agency” will likely be in place (in shadow form, at least) “by the end of the summer.”
Ending the ‘piecemeal approach’ to tackling white collar crime
By establishing the Economic Crime Agency, the coalition Government hopes that the ‘piecemeal’ approach to tackling white collar crime of this nature will end.
Read Robert Wardle’s initial take on this subject, which was published on SMT Online last August (a dedicated link is provided on the right hand panel of this page)
The National Fraud Authority presently estimates that fraud costs the UK GB pound 30 billion every year.
Monster issues job hunting security advice
Monster.co.uk is urging job seekers to follow its security advice after some Monster users’ contact information was stolen.
Email scams can take on a number of forms when targeting those who are job-hunting.
‘Phishing’ is a process designed to fraudulently obtain an individual’s personal information and account log-in information for their online profiles on job websites. Users may also be asked to download software that turns out to be malicious.
Monster will never ask users to download software to access its accounts or to use its services.
‘Spoofing’ is when a user receives a fraudulent offer of employment, or is offered an opportunity to act as a go-between for payment processing or money transfers. This is also known as ‘money muling’.
How to avoid becoming a phishing victim
- be suspicious if you receive an e-mail with an urgent request for personal financial information
- beware that phishers often say something upsetting or exciting in their e-mails to encourage people to react quickly
- phishing e-mails often ask for a lot of personal information that you wouldn’t normally give out easily (including usernames, passwords, credit card numbers, National Insurance numbers, date of birth, etc)
- don’t click on links in e-mails or other online correspondence if you’re suspicious about whether it’s genuine… if you’re not sure, phone the company on a known phone number or type-in the known URL of the company into the address bar to access your account (you’ll still see if you have any updates or messages)
- check that the website you are using is secure before submitting bank account information or other sensitive information online… you can do this by checking that the web address starts with ‘https’ and has a padlock in the address bar
Anyone who has inadvertently given out their bank details in response to a suspicious e-mail should contact their bank immediately.
Anyone who has lost money to fraud should report it to Action Fraud (access the details via our web link on the right hand panel of this page)
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