Latin American police officials and prosecutors receive training in Spain on fighting cybercrime

A total of 15 Latin American police officials and prosecutors are participating in a training workshop on combating cybercrime, one of the seven priority threats defined by the States of the Americas, which starts today and will continue until 9th June. The activity is part of the AMERIPOL-EU European cooperation programme, managed by the FIIAPP, which seeks to eradicate drug trafficking between Latin America and Europe through the exchange of information between the police community of the Americas (AMERIPOL) and the European Union, including judicial authorities and prosecutor’s offices.

The 15 police officials and prosecutors come from Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Panama, Peru, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Mexico and the Dominican Republic. “If computer crime has no borders, then efforts to fight it shouldn’t either. One of the most effective ways of increasing cooperation between the legal entities in existence is to be able to have this direct personal link to the people working on this problem in the different countries”, states Major Luis Fernández Tuesta, deputy head of Colombia’s cybernetics centre and one of the police officials attending the course. The Andean nation is primarily affected by fraud and online theft. In 2014 over 1,000 complaints were received.

This workshop is an opportunity to expand the network proposed by Fernández Tuesta. “We need to establish highly specific coordination protocols, know the person on the other end of the phone line, and know the structures of our sister countries in order to share the evidence needed to identify suspects”, adds Oliver González, a police official from Mexico, a country in which 63,000 cyber incidents were recorded between December 2012 and last month.

The course is being kicked off at the Secretariat of State for Security, where the first day will be held, and will be theoretical in nature. On Tuesday the 2nd, an itinerary of visits to institutions, such as the police complex of Canillas, the National Cybersecurity Institute (INCIBE) and the directorate-general of the Civil Guard, will start. They will also be visiting the Telefónica company, where they will attend a presentation on cyber investigations.

In addition to learning about the Spanish model, they will explore the British and Italian models with the help of experts from the United Kingdom and Italy.

Aware that cybercrime is a growing threat and that the INTERPOL and EUROPOL law enforcement institutions have centres for combating cybercrime in Singapore and The Hague, respectively, the AMERIPOL-EU project felt it was a good time to organise a workshop on this subject.

“Although this project is part of the ‘Cocaine Route’, it is much more ambitious. It cannot just be aimed at this area, but at organised crime in general”, indicates Marcos Alvar, the Spanish police official sent by the FIIAPP to Colombia to coordinate AMERIPOL-EU. “The National Police Force of Spain signed an exclusive cooperation agreement with AMERIPOL last year to advise the community on the creation of a cybercrime centre”, he continues.

Crimes in this field affect privacy, threaten the stability of global communications, and result in very significant losses to consumers and companies linked to e-commerce.