New Law Enters into Force Tackling Online Criminals

A new law will enter into force on August 1 to help authorities crack down on online criminals, Minister of Justice Bence Tuzson announced at a press conference in Budapest. At the initiative of the Ministry of Justice, in cooperation with the Minist

By: hungarytoday.hu

Jul 18 2024
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New Law Enters into Force Tack

A new law will enter into force on August 1 to help authorities crack down on online criminals, Minister of Justice Bence Tuzson announced at a press conference in Budapest.

At the initiative of the Ministry of Justice, in cooperation with the Ministry for National Economy, the Hungarian National Bank (MNB) and the Hungarian Banking Association, a package of laws was submitted to Parliament this spring to enable authorities to use the possibilities and tools provided by law to take action against online criminals.

Bence Tuzson said that this is the first legislative package to be the result of intensive government work against online fraud. He added that

the aim of the new package of laws is to speed up the detection and prosecution of criminal offenses.

The package is about strengthening the security of families and people, the Minister stressed.

Among the essential elements of the legislation, the politician said, was speeding up the exchange of information between banks to track the amount of money stolen and intervene to freeze it. Online marketplaces should also be involved in detecting criminal activity by taking action to delete user accounts used for fraud, he noted. Mr Tuzson emphasized that the amendments to criminal proceedings are intended to make them more effective. An important change will be the allocation of cases, whereby courts will be able to act on the basis of general jurisdiction without special expertise. Another change will be that the investigating authority will be able to request certain banking and telecommunications data without the need for a prosecutor’s request, so that the data needed to identify individuals can be collected more quickly.

He highlighted that

further legislation to strengthen cooperation between investigating authorities and banks is planned for adoption in the autumn.

He also added that the number of victim support centers is currently 15, and that there are plans to set them up in every county. Colleagues working in the centers will provide legal, psychological and professional guidance, and the system will provide a range of feedback that can be used in the legislative process, the Minister pointed out.

Csaba Kandrács, Deputy Governor of the Hungarian National Bank, called the new law a milestone, as it strengthens the activities related to stopping and recovering stolen customer money. The fast and effective joint work of banks and investigative authorities is a key element in this, as it ensures that stolen funds are stopped, recovered. He said that the MNB expects banks to use real-time monitoring systems to detect suspicious transactions, before they are executed.

The new abuse-filtering system will use artificial intelligence to detect and filter out unusual payment patterns and report them to banks within 5 seconds of the transfer being made.

The fight against fraud is an ongoing and varied challenge, with credit card fraud in particular rising sharply again in the first quarter of this year, while the number of cases involving credit transfers has increased only slightly, the Deputy Governor noted. More recently, fraudsters are increasingly using targeted phishing, where attackers use public information, including that available on social media, to lure potential victims with personalized messages.

During the press conference, Levente Kovács, Secretary General of the Hungarian Banking Association added that banking sector is working on a centralized fraud detection system, which could be ready by 2025.

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