France and SA signed a co-operation protocol on Monday to improve the cyber forensic capabilities of the Special Investigating Unit (SIU).
The agreement, signed by justice minister Ronald Lamola and French minister for Europe and foreign affairs Catherine Colonna, will capacitate the SIU on cyber forensic, financial crimes and analytical skills. It will result in the establishment of an anticorruption academy in Pretoria.
The academy will serve members of the SIU and other law enforcement agencies and anticorruption agencies within Sadc member states, as well as Commonwealth and non-Commonwealth countries.
Cybercrime in SA is a growing threat. “This initiative aims to enhance investigative capabilities and prevention measures and promote anticorruption and public education,” the justice department said in a media release.
SIU head Andy Mothibi, Hawks head Godfrey Lebeya, international relations and co-operation minister Naledi Pandor and deputy justice minister John Jeffery were among those present at the signing ceremony.
Colonna said in her speech that as a result of the very close collaboration and assistance by French experts, the SIU now has 22 trained trainers who possess the capabilities to train other investigators.
Many members of the SIU had been to France to get exposure to French expertise in the field of cyber investigations.
Lamola noted that the training would enable SA’s forensic cyber capabilities to be on par with international standards. He added that cybercrimes were no longer national but were transnational in nature.
Pandor said that the government of President Cyril Ramaphosa had made the fight against corruption a priority and expressed confidence that SA’s new partnership with France would improve capacity and skills for the SIU in leading the fight in this area.
“We have seen a global increase in cybercrime. It is therefore vitally important that governments around the world co-operate in building effective capacities to counter this scourge and create the conditions in which our populations can feel safe online.”
According to researchers at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), SA ranks sixth in the world for cybercrime density, or cybercrime per capita.
A 2021 African Cyberthreat Assessment Report by Interpol referred to a 2020 report by Accenture which highlighted SA’s cybercrime vulnerabilities. It said that SA had the third-highest number of cybercrime victims worldwide at a cost of R2.2bn a year.
“The scale of this cyber criminality is further evidenced when we consider that the country has seen a 100% increase in mobile banking application fraud and is estimated to suffer 577 malware attacks an hour. Such malware attacks are one of the emerging threats,” the Interpol report said.
In its 2022 Global Crime Trend Summary Report, Interpol also noted that financial crimes and cybercrime are invariably linked “as a significant amount of financial fraud takes place through digital technologies (making it ‘cyber-enabled’) and cybercriminals also depend on financial fraud to launder their illicit gains”.
It is in this context that SA’s greylisting by the Financial Action Task Force, an international body that assesses a country’s regime to combat money laundering and terrorism financial is relevant. It found SA’s system deficient in a number of respects.
In 2020 the Cybercrimes Act was promulgated which creates cybercrime offences, criminalised the disclosure of data messages, which are harmful; provides for interim protection orders; regulated jurisdiction in respect of cybercrimes; and further regulates the powers to investigate cybercrimes.
The act also regulates aspects relating to mutual assistance in respect of the investigation of cybercrimes; imposes obligations to report cybercrimes; provides for capacity building; and provides that the executive may enter into agreements with foreign states to promote measures aimed at the detection, prevention, mitigation and investigation of cybercrimes.
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