(MENAFN- Kuwait News Agency (KUNA)) BRUSSELS, Feb 17 (KUNA) -- A joint investigation supported by Europol and led by police authorities of a number of European countries has led to the dismantling of a Franco-Israeli criminal network involved in large-scale CEO (chief executive officer) fraud.
The operational activities resulted in five action days, which took place between January 2022 and January 2023 in France and Israel, Europol said in a press release Friday.
The five action days resulted in eight house searches in France and Israel, the arrest of the main organiser in Israel and arrest of eight other suspects, six in France and two in Israel.
The criminal network, comprised of French and Israeli nationals, targeted companies located in France.
In early December 2021, one of the suspects impersonated the CEO of a company specialised in metallurgy, based in the department of Haute-Marne in north-eastern France.
The fraudster asked the company's accountant to make an urgent and confidential transfer of 300, 000 euro (USD 320,000) to a bank in Hungary.
The fraud was discovered a few days later and the company filed a complaint, and the investigators subsequently found that the call from the alleged CEO came from a number in Israel.
In late December 2021, a real estate developer based in Paris also felt victim to fraud in a similar method.
The damages were much more significant in this case, however. To perpetrate the fraud, the suspects impersonated lawyers, saying they worked for a well-known French accounting company.
After gaining the victim's trust, the fraudster requested a large, urgent and confidential transfer. Pretending to be consultants, they persuaded the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) to transfer millions of euros abroad.
In total, they defrauded the company of almost 38 million euro (USD 40 million) in a matter of days.
Using a pre-existing money laundering scheme, these funds were quickly transferred to different European countries, then to China and finally to Israel, said Europol, the EU's police agency based at The Hague. (end)
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