Strengthening Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice Responses to Prevent and Combat Fraud

Urges Member States to consider organized fraud as a serious crime, as defined in article 2 (b) of the United Nations Convention on Transnational Organized Crime,¹ in accordance with their national legislation, in order to ensure that, where the offence is transnational in nature and involves an organized criminal group, effective international cooperation can be afforded under the Convention, and calls upon Member States to continue to develop and implement targeted and evidence-based crime prevention measures and criminal justice responses to prevent and combat fraud;

Calls upon Member States, where appropriate, to promote and implement multi-stakeholder and multisectoral fraud awareness and crime prevention initiatives, such as educational and public messaging campaigns to increase resilience and reduce vulnerability to fraud, including through a better understanding of emerging fraud threats and by reducing vulnerability to deceptive recruitment practices;

Also calls upon Member States to take steps to thoroughly investigate and, where appropriate, duly prosecute fraud cases and hold perpetrators of fraud accountable, while recognizing prosecutorial discretion and judicial independence, including through, where appropriate and in accordance with domestic law and applicable international law, mutual legal assistance, extradition, the recovery and return of proceeds of crimes and the denial of safe haven;

Urges Member States, through their appropriate national bodies, including central banks, financial supervisory authorities and financial intelligence units, to take steps to ensure that regulated financial institutions adopt robust fraud risk management frameworks, in accordance with domestic law;

Calls upon Member States, through their appropriate national authorities, regulators, competent authorities and public-private partnerships, to encourage, where appropriate, online platforms, telecommunication providers and other relevant stakeholders to implement effective systems and controls to prevent, detect and disrupt fraudulent activity and misuse of their services and to cooperate with law enforcement authorities, in accordance with domestic law;

Encourages Member States to establish or maintain legislation to criminalize conduct involved in the commission of cyber-enabled fraud and allow for improved international cooperation for the effective investigation and prosecution of cyber-enabled fraud;

Calls upon Member States to strengthen international cooperation and domestic measures to identify, freeze, seize, confiscate and return the proceeds of crime derived from fraud, prioritizing compensating victims or return to legitimate owners in accordance with their domestic law and international obligations;

Encourages Member States to consider establishing dedicated bodies for preventing and combating fraud, where appropriate, such as specialized fraud combating units or organized crime units that address fraud, with a clear mandate to, inter alia, manage and coordinate the investigation of cases of fraud and associated crimes to support competent authorities in addressing organized and systemic fraud threats, and coordinate complex and cross-border cases;

Strongly encourages Member States to take effective measures to identify, disrupt and dismantle organized fraud operations, such as scam centres and other operations involving trafficking in persons for the purpose of committing fraud, including by disrupting deceptive worker recruitment practices and dismantling financial networks and supply chains used by organized criminal groups to commit fraud;

Encourages Member States, in accordance with domestic law and within their means, to implement and strengthen appropriate measures to protect and support victims of fraud and victims of trafficking in persons for the purpose of forced criminality in fraud operations, including:

Calls upon Member States to take the appropriate measures, in accordance with their domestic law, to prevent, detect, counter and disrupt technical fraud facilitators, including the misuse of digital infrastructure, communication services and financial systems, and also calls upon Member States to investigate and, where appropriate, prosecute the natural and legal persons that, including through such acts as money-laundering and corruption, aid and abet fraud;

Encourages Member States to strengthen international cooperation, including mutual legal assistance, extradition, coordination on asset recovery among fraud combating units, financial intelligence units and other competent authorities, joint or parallel investigations, as appropriate, and the exchange of information in accordance with domestic legislation and applicable international law, with a view to disrupting criminality and dismantling transnational organized criminal groups engaged in fraud;

Also encourages Member States, when preventing, investigating and prosecuting fraud, to use the information, in accordance with domestic law and regulations and, where appropriate, provided by their fraud combating units, financial intelligence units and other competent authorities, and to strengthen cooperation between their financial intelligence units through the appropriate use of existing channels and networks for information-sharing;

Calls upon Member States to strengthen international cooperation to prevent and combat fraud by enhancing information-sharing and operational collaboration among law enforcement authorities and specialized multinational and multi-agency task forces, and encourages Member States to make use of the channels and capabilities of competent investigative authorities, judicial authorities and international cooperation networks, including the channels and capabilities of the International Criminal Police Organization (INTERPOL), to support the secure and timely transmission of data, while ensuring compliance with their domestic law and international obligations;

Encourages Member States to take steps to promote action by private industry partners, including financial institutions, online platforms and services, telecommunications providers, virtual asset service providers and other relevant sectors, to prevent, detect and disrupt fraud, by means of:

Also encourages Member States to consider, within their means, the use of advanced and emerging technologies, including, within their domestic cybercontext, digital forensics and data analytics as tools to support efforts aimed at facilitating the prevention, investigation and prosecution of fraud cases, with full respect for human rights, privacy and data protection, in accordance with their domestic law and international obligations;

Further encourages Member States to strengthen the provision of impactful and effective technical assistance, including through the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, taking into consideration the needs and priorities identified by requesting States, to support achievable results in preventing and combating fraud;

Requests the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, within its mandate and subject to the availability of extrabudgetary resources and subject to review by the Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice, after three years, to:

Invites Member States that endorsed the outcome documents of the Global Fraud Summit 2026, namely the Call to Action on Combating Fraud and the Global Public-Private Partnership Framework against Fraud, to benefit from those documents in their domestic efforts to prevent and combat fraud;

Invites Member States and other stakeholders to consider providing voluntary contributions for the purposes set out in the present resolution, and requests the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime to utilize any extrabudgetary resources provided for those purposes efficiently and effectively.