OSCE delivers webinar on online payment fraud for police cadets in Uzbekistan

On 28 September, the OSCE Secretariat’s Transnational Threats Department and the OSCE Project Co-ordinator in Uzbekistan organized a webinar on online payment fraud for the Academy of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Republic of Uzbekistan in Tashkent.

During the webinar, the OSCE briefed around 80 cadets and lecturers from the Academy about the types of online payment fraud and methods used by criminals, as well as recent global and national trends in this area. Experts also discussed challenges in investigating and prosecuting online payment fraud and international co-operation between law enforcement agencies and the private sector.

“Digital technologies have transformed many traditional forms of crime by significantly increasing the number of potential victims and finding new methods of committing offences. Online payment fraud, as one of the most common and widespread forms of cyber-enabled crime, is a prime example of this worrying trend,” said Sergei Sizov, Acting OSCE Project Co-ordinator in Uzbekistan.

Speakers included experts from the INTERPOL Financial Crime and Anti-Corruption Centre, Cybercrime Centre at the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Republic of Uzbekistan, and Mastercard.

It was the second such webinar in 2023 and marks a continuation of the 2022 series on raising awareness about trends in contemporary policing. The first webinar took place in June and focused on threats posed by malware. Two more webinars are planned for later this year, focusing on the Dark Web criminal landscape and crypto-currency related crimes.

The webinars complement the national and regional training activities conducted by the OSCE in Uzbekistan as part of the extra-budgetary project “Capacity building on combating cybercrime in Central Asia”.