UK could revoke trade and aid in fight against online fraud

The UK government could tie trade and aid deals to its effort to root out financial crime, according to Home Office anti-fraud minister Lord Hanson of Flint. Fraud is the most prevalent crime in the UK, accounting for 39% of all reported crime in England and Wales.

“Fraudsters operate across multiple banks, tech platforms, telecommunications and jurisdictions. It’s a transnational threat, and it’s imperative that we as a government work to tackle that threat,” Hanson said at UK Finance’s economic crime Congress in London last week.

He added that he was keen to adopt a cross-government approach to tackling fraud that emanated from overseas and that seven or eight countries presented a “real danger” to the UK citizens in terms of fraud origination.

Hanson pointed out the UK traded with, and had free trade agreements and defence arrangements with, these countries — as well as sometimes providing aid to them and “having a number of businesses where we link a range of things with government activity”.

“Let’s have a holistic government approach. We trade with these countries; we sometimes provide aid to these countries,” he said. “Let us look at how we put a global net around the fraudsters that are operating from them. And let’s look at the power that we have across government to make some difference on those issues.”

Fraud strategy

The Home Office could not immediately provide details about which countries Hanson was referring to.

Labour adopted the previous government’s 2023 fraud strategy when it took office in the summer. Hanson said he had been tasked with developing the next iteration of this strategy over the next 12 to 18 months.

In September, a report by cross-party think-tank the Social Market Foundation recommended financial penalties for governments that failed to prevent fraud being perpetrated via services that came from their countries.