UK officials visit Singapore to learn practices to tackle scams

Members of the United Kingdom’s Home Affairs Select Committee, who’re present Members of Parliament, visited the Ministry of Home Affairs on 9 May as a part of their ongoing inquiry into fraud, an official news release acknowledged.

Simon Fell MP, who’s the UK Prime Minister’s Anti-Fraud Champion, was additionally a part of the delegation. The Committee needed to learn about Singapore’s method and response to scams, together with prevention, detection, and prosecution. Singapore is the one nation that the Committee visited as a part of the inquiry.

During the visit, the Committee known as on Sun Xueling, Minister of State, Ministry of Home Affairs and Ministry of Social and Family Development, who defined how the federal government works with personal sector stakeholders to successfully fight present and rising types of fraud and scams.

The delegates additionally visited the Singapore Police Force’s Anti-Scam Command (ASCom) to learn about its work and capabilities. The ASCom is an operational set-up with financial institution employees and regulation enforcement officers who’re co-located and work collectively to hint rip-off proceeds and freeze scam-tainted financial institution accounts promptly.

In 2023, the ASCom froze greater than 19,600 financial institution accounts primarily based on experiences referred to the Anti-Scam Centre and recovered greater than SGD 100 million. In phrases of rip-off prevention, the ASCom efficiently carried out greater than 590 proactive interventions, averting greater than SGD 44 million of potential losses for potential rip-off victims in 2023.

MOS Sun, who’s Chairperson of Singapore’s Inter-Ministerial Committee on Scams mentioned, “Scams and cyber-enabled fraud are key priorities for each Singapore and the UK. Singapore is delighted to host the UK’s Home Affairs Select Committee, and to share our technique to tackle scams. We had fruitful discussions with the Select Committee on our greatest practices, in addition to potential areas of collaboration between our two nations. We look ahead to strengthening bilateral cooperation with the UK on scams and different cybercrime. Given the transnational nature of scams, we’ll proceed to strengthen collaboration with different worldwide counterparts, reminiscent of by way of facilitating the transnational restoration of rip-off proceeds and galvanising business stakeholders.”

Fraud continues to have an effect on our lives, and our inquiry has heard concerning the methods fraud is being detected and prevented in England and Wales. A key space of focus for the inquiry contains understanding what different nations are reaching when it comes to detection, prevention, and prosecution of fraud. In our proof periods, Singapore has repeatedly been talked about to us as one of many prime nations in relation to its response to fraud, in addition to its public consciousness communication. Our visit to Singapore has been extremely insightful, as we heard from the Ministry of Home Affairs on what the nation is doing to fight fraud. We had been notably to visit the Singapore Police Force’s Anti-Scam Command, which was an excellent alternative to perceive how the Singaporean Government, regulation enforcement and the personal sector are actively working collectively to cope with fraud crimes. There are necessary classes to be learnt from Singapore’s response to fraud, and we anticipate our visit will assist inform and form our suggestions as a part of the inquiry.

– Dame Diana Johnson, Chair of the Home Affairs Select Committee.

Besides the Ministry of Home Affairs, the committee additionally visited different anti-scam stakeholders such because the Monetary Authority of Singapore, the Attorney-General’s Chambers, in addition to banks, telecommunications firms (telcos), and e-commerce platforms.

Singapore has additionally been actively concerned in worldwide platforms to name for better collaboration within the world combat towards scams and fraud. In March 2024, the city-state endorsed a joint communiqué with 10 different nations to sign a high-level dedication to tackle scams on the Global Fraud Summit.

During the Summit, Josephine Teo, Minister for Communications and Information & Second Minister for Home Affairs shared Singapore’s anti-scam measures and known as for business companions to strengthen their anti-scam efforts.