South East Europe has increasingly become the home region of criminal groups dealing with fraud schemes and the utilization of information technology for criminal purposes. These groups rapidly exploit the new technological development and free movement opportunities, engaging their resources to transfer knowledge across borders and commit crimes in their native economic and financial environments and beyond.
Over the past years, complex internet and plastic card frauds committed in the Western Europe and United States have been connected to criminals from South East Europe. The crimes have spread to all countries with the widening of Internet access and development of national payment card markets.
A Task Force on Financial and Computer Crime is active today in the framework of the SECI Center, targeting five specialized crime areas: counterfeit currency, plastic card fraud, cyber-crime, intellectual property theft and money laundering.
