“Public and private sectors must collaborate to combat financial crime”

Nataraj Muneesamy, Assistant Director of Prosecutions 

• “The private sector encounters risks and operational realities that prosecutors or investigators may not necessarily see from their own perspective. That exchange of information is therefore essential.”

Technology is fundamentally changing the nature and scale of financial crime. Criminals who once had to focus on individual victims can now use automation, scripts, bots and artificial intelligence to target hundreds or even thousands of people simultaneously. Identity theft, electronic-signature fraud and increasingly sophisticated deepfakes are further complicating the task of financial institutions, investigators and prosecutors. For Nataraj Muneesamy, Assistant Director of Public Prosecutions, this constitutes a “silent epidemic” that transcends national borders. His assessment is also clear on Mauritius: the country does not necessarily need more legislation, but it must ensure that its law-enforcement agencies have adequate staffing, expertise, technology, software and training. Speaking to Bizweek during the 8th Annual Mauritian Financial Crime Conference, he also makes the case for more candid and practical cooperation between the public and private sectors.

Why do you describe digital financial crime as a “silent epidemic”?

When we talk about criminality, people subconsciously tend to categorise different forms of crime and assign them different degrees of priority or seriousness. Take murder, for example. In people’s minds, that belongs to one category. Theft or financial loss may be perceived differently, while having an account hacked might be placed in yet another category. What we do not always realise, however, is that these categories are increasingly merging.

Someone could, for example, be murdered because criminals wanted to steal that person’s money or gain access to his bank accounts. What I am saying is that these different forms of criminality are becoming interconnected. Financial crime can be a predominant element even where other forms of criminality are involved. Why do I call it a “silent epidemic”? Because technology is now everywhere. We are having this conversation using a highly sophisticated piece of technology that, not so long ago, could have featured in Star Trek. Yet today, it is simply part of everyday life.

“It is not enough to decide at one point that an institution has sufficient people, technology or expertise.”

What we tend to overlook is not only how omnipresent technology has become, but also how accessible it is to everyone, including criminals.

Criminals are essentially doing what everyone else does: they use the tools that are readily available to them. The difference, of course, is that they use those tools to commit crimes. We all use artificial intelligence nowadays. ChatGPT is one example. You buy an iPhone and AI is already embedded in it. Google has AI. It is everywhere, and we increasingly take it for granted.

But criminals have access to exactly the same technologies. If you look at criminal activity today, particularly offences involving financial gain, what we broadly describe as financial crime, you will increasingly see technology being used. Artificial intelligence is one example, and a relatively recent one, but this phenomenon is certainly not confined to AI.

How has technology changed the scale at which these crimes can be committed?

Take hacking. Increasingly, hacking involves automation. Criminals use scripts and bots capable of repeatedly carrying out a series of tasks without requiring someone to perform each operation manually.

Traditionally, a criminal would have had to concentrate his attention on a particular victim. If I wanted to steal money from you, for example, I would have had to focus my efforts specifically on you. Automation has completely changed that equation. A criminal operation can now target ten, a hundred or a thousand people simultaneously.

That is happening in Mauritius, and it is happening around the world. There is another important consequence of technology’s global reach. The criminals targeting us are not necessarily Mauritian, nor do they necessarily operate from Mauritius.

They can be located abroad, and once they obtain the money, it does not necessarily remain in Mauritius. It can be siphoned out to other jurisdictions through various sophisticated structures.

The phenomenon is becoming increasingly prevalent, and its scale continues to grow.

How sophisticated and organised have these criminal operations become?

To understand the scale involved, we can look at developments elsewhere in the world.

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime reported in September 2025 on trends in criminality linked to digital technology and technological innovation in Southeast Asia.

“We need to keep reassessing capabilities of our ressource to ensure that we are where we want to be and that our law-enforcement agencies can operate efficiently.”

In that region, you have what are commonly described as scam farms. These operations can involve a hundred or more people working systematically to scam victims, hack into their accounts, obtain their passwords and circumvent the security measures designed to protect them.

And this is not unique to Southeast Asia. Similar activities can be found in Eastern Europe and elsewhere. I am using one region as an example, but the phenomenon exists around the world. That is precisely why I describe it as an epidemic: it is spreading.

Yet, we do not necessarily talk about it in those terms. We talk about epidemics such as Ebola, for example, and focus on the number of victims they have claimed. But we do not necessarily talk in the same way about the victims of financial crime, whose numbers could run into the hundreds of thousands, if not more.

Technology is facilitating this expansion to a considerable degree, and the growth could potentially become exponential. These criminal operations are not simply about one person sitting behind a hundred computers.

You can have a thousand mobile phones and a thousand SIM cards. You can have scripts and bots carrying out repetitive tasks automatically, without someone having to sit behind a screen and perform every operation individually. And now artificial intelligence is also being used to power scams and other criminal activities.

The consequence is that criminals’ access to potential victims has increased dramatically. The internet and online services are used by people all over the world. Criminals can therefore exploit that same global connectivity to reach potential victims virtually anywhere. That is why I chose the expression “silent epidemic”. We are not necessarily recognising it as an epidemic. I think we should.

What forms of digitally enabled financial crime are prosecutors increasingly encountering?

We are increasingly seeing identity theft. Someone can assume the identity of the legitimate owner of a bank account and then issue instructions, for instance, to a management company or another third party to transfer $100,000 to a particular account.

Essentially, that person has stolen someone else’s identity in order to authorise a fraudulent transaction. When I started, someone attempting that type of fraud would have had to forge a physical document, perhaps by reproducing another person’s handwriting or signature.

Today, the situation is very different. We use electronic signatures, and those signatures can potentially be forged. Companies and financial institutions have therefore developed additional verification mechanisms. They may conduct a callback and say: “We want to make sure that it was really you who signed this document.”

They may telephone the client or arrange a video call to verify that the instruction genuinely came from that person. But the use of artificial intelligence and deepfake technology is creating another level of difficulty. We are seeing trends around the world, not necessarily in Mauritius at present, involving the use of deepfakes to emulate someone’s voice.

Deepfake technology can also emulate a person’s appearance. There is no reason to believe that Mauritius will necessarily remain unaffected by these developments.

This creates significant difficulties for legitimate companies and financial institutions that are trying to establish the true identity of their clients before authorising a transaction. Technology is making that verification process increasingly challenging.

How should prosecutors and law-enforcement agencies respond to this technological evolution?

At the moment, I think we are still coming to terms with what is happening. We are increasingly becoming aware of these developments, and they raise questions that I ask myself as a prosecutor. They are also precisely the sort of issues we need to discuss at conferences such as this one. But I believe solutions exist.

A good example is the EncroChat case in Europe three or four years ago. EncroChat involved specially equipped mobile phones that criminals could purchase. When switched on, the device could appear to be an ordinary mobile phone. But through a particular code or interface, users could access an encrypted communication platform. Through that network, criminals could communicate securely with one another. They could use it, for example, in connection with drug trafficking, arranging purchases, pickups, drop-offs and other aspects of their criminal activities. It was, in a sense, comparable to the dark web in that criminals could find one another and communicate through what they believed was a secure network without anyone being able to decrypt their conversations. The investigation, as I recall, involved the Dutch police and subsequently cooperation with other European law-enforcement agencies. They managed to infiltrate the EncroChat network, identify users and proceed with arrests. It was estimated that EncroChat had around 60,000 users.

The important point is that this was an example of criminals using technology to their advantage. But it was also an example of law enforcement finding a way to penetrate and dismantle a technology-enabled criminal network. So I believe solutions exist.

In the same way that criminals are using artificial intelligence and other technologies to facilitate the commission of offences, law-enforcement agencies will have to invest in technology, including AI, to improve their ability to detect those crimes. We need to be proactive, perhaps even more proactive than the criminals themselves. Otherwise, it will become increasingly difficult to stop them.

You also mentioned the importance of public-private partnerships. Why is that necessary?

This is something we talk about a great deal, both in Mauritius and abroad, but I do not think we always see enough practical action. Law-enforcement agencies and regulators need to engage with the private sector and work towards common solutions.

Financial institutions, management companies and legitimate businesses do not want to participate in criminal activity, nor do they want their organisations or systems to become the means through which someone is able to commit or facilitate a crime.

By talking to these organisations, law enforcement can better understand the problems they encounter and identify pragmatic and constructive solutions to the growing threat posed by financial crime involving digital devices and technological innovation.

The private sector encounters risks and operational realities that prosecutors or investigators may not necessarily see from their own perspective. That exchange of information is therefore essential.

How useful are conferences such as this one in facilitating those exchanges?

They are very important. I think a prosecutor needs to leave his office every now and then because we need to remain in touch with reality and understand what is happening on the ground.

In my field, “on the ground” means understanding what management companies and people working in the financial sector are thinking and experiencing. These conferences enable us to do exactly that.

You hear about issues that you might not otherwise have considered. For example, during the conference we heard people discussing the difficulties they face in determining whether they should file a suspicious transaction report.

They also have to decide how quickly such a report should be filed. These are very practical problems for the people dealing with them on a daily basis. They are not necessarily issues that prosecutors think about from the same perspective.

It is therefore useful to understand the difficulties faced by the industry, to hear its perspective and to listen to the suggestions it may have. There is always something valuable to emerge from these exchanges.

From a legislative perspective, is Mauritius keeping pace with technological developments?

My personal view is that Mauritian legislation is up to date. We have discussed this before. You can spend all the time in the world legislating and legislating, but ultimately what you need is a sound body of legislation that enables law-enforcement agencies to take action.

The legal framework must allow crimes to be detected, promote their prevention and enable victims to obtain justice. In Mauritius, I think we have the necessary laws.

The question, therefore, is not really whether we should legislate more. The more important question is whether we have the resources required to address the threat effectively.

When you talk about resources, are you referring to human resources?

Human resources are certainly a major part of it. From the perspective of government and law enforcement, you need an adequate number of staff. But it is not simply a question of numbers. The quality of those human resources is equally important and there is another aspect that matters greatly: retention. You have to be able to retain your staff. We also need to think about their welfare. I often cite Singapore as an example. Our Singaporean colleagues are very well paid, and their well-being is a matter of concern both to their hierarchy and to the government.

These are considerations we need to take into account. You need to create an environment that enables people to work effectively, but also one in which they actually want to remain. This is a very stressful job. If you invest in people’s skills and expertise but cannot retain them, you ultimately weaken the institution’s capacity.

Does the question of resources extend beyond staffing?

Absolutely. Resources also mean technology. We need the technology. We need the appropriate software. And we need the training that comes with it. These elements cannot be considered separately. There is little point in acquiring sophisticated technological tools if the people who need to use them have not received the necessary training. As criminals’ technological capabilities evolve, those available to law enforcement must evolve as well.

Could public-private cooperation help compensate for some of the expertise or resource constraints within the public sector?

One of the most important benefits of a public-private approach is that it helps you understand what you actually need. There are things we know, and there are gaps in our knowledge that we are aware of. But, there are also things we do not even realise we do not know. That is an important distinction.

The only way to identify some of those blind spots is by talking to colleagues in the private sector. Once that dialogue takes place, you are in a better position to identify a specific set of needs. You can then ask the relevant questions: Do I need to train my colleagues, or myself, in a particular area? Do we need new software? Are there new tools or different ways of working that could improve what we do? The first step is understanding where the gaps actually are.

Could AI itself become one of the tools used by prosecutors?

Yes. There are already tools available that could make our work easier and more efficient. There is a company in the United States, for example, that is developing artificial intelligence specifically for lawyers, including prosecutors. I have friends working abroad, including in Amsterdam, who use this type of technology. They tell me that it is genuinely helping them in the work they do.

Of course, human intervention remains essential. You still need a person to review and double-check everything. AI does not remove that responsibility. But, it can facilitate the work and take care of a significant portion of the workload that lawyers otherwise have to deal with.

The tools are out there. We need to identify those that can help us, determine how they can be integrated appropriately and use them to perform our work more efficiently.

By the time this interview is published, the conference will be over. What would be your main message following these two days of discussions?

I would highlight three things. First, we need to be aware of the crimes that are happening today and understand how those crimes are being committed, and when I say that, I do not mean only criminal activity taking place in Mauritius.The reality today is that we can be affected by all types of criminality, even when the activity originates elsewhere in the world.

Mauritius is an important international financial centre. We are connected to the world, and there is no doubt about that. That means developments and criminal activities elsewhere can have consequences for us.

Second, I think we need to talk more honestly to each other, particularly between the public and private sectors.

We need candid dialogue about what each side is experiencing, the threats we face and the practical solutions that can be developed together. Third, we must not overlook the importance of adequate staffing and resources.

These requirements also need to be reviewed constantly. It is not enough to decide at one point that an institution has sufficient people, technology or expertise. We need to keep reassessing those capabilities to ensure that we are where we want to be and that our law-enforcement agencies can operate efficiently.

Those would be my three principal takeaways.