Bucharest, October 18th 2016 – Due to extent of Internet as a communication and commerce tool and the dynamic interconnections built globally, financial and computer crimes became a very serious problem with a strong negative impact on the economic and social environments, generating considerable losses to individuals, businesses and governments. Hence, the resilient cooperation among the law enforcement experts has an essential role in countering these serious and growing threats.
SELEC, in its constant effort to further enhance this collaboration, organized the annual meeting of the Financial and Computer Crime Task Force, which was held during 13 – 14 October 2016, in Ohrid/Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, with the participation of experts from SELEC Member States and representatives of the private sector.
The meeting was opened by the Director General of SELEC, Mr. Toni Jakimovski, the Director for Operations of SELEC, Mr. Romulus Nicolae Ungureanu and Mr. Oliver Andonov, Deputy Minister of Interior of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.
Mr. Jakimovski, SELEC Director General, mentioned about SELEC’s expertise and its endeavors in preventing an countering financial and computer crime, yet cybercrime is a fast-growing area of crime, new trends in cybercrime emerging continuously. SELEC’s role is of utmost importance, having in view that most cybercrimes are transnational.
The National Coordinator of the Task Force, Mr. Marjan Stoilkovski and the Director for Operations of SELEC made an overview of the activities and future plans to be conducted within the framework of the Task Force, Mr. Ungureanu underlining the importance of a common approach regarding cyber defence, so as to prevent such crimes, not only to tackle them. Mr. Ungureanu also made a reference to the projects initiated by SELEC to support its activities and encouraged the Member States’ representatives to use more often SELEC platform for the swift information exchange.
The main objective of the meeting was discussing new trends and learn new methods for identifying and investigating financial and computer crimes, providing a platform for networking and discussing regional approaches in preventing and countering financial and computer crimes, sharing challenges and good practices, with the overall goal of enhancing regional cooperation in this field.
Since the establishment of the Task Force in 2001, SELEC organizes annually the meetings of the Financial and Computer Crime Task Force in coordination with Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, as Coordinator of this Task Force.
