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BoE governor lobbies BigTech to tackle fraud

By Will McCurdy

Bank of England (BoE) governor Andrew Bailey has reportedly been lobbying to make it a legal requirement for BigTech giants to tackle online financial fraud.

The report, originally by the Sunday Times, claimed Bailey had been lobbying home secretary Priti Patel to include the measure in the Online Harms Bill expected to be put before parliament later this year.

A BoE spokesperson said the central bank does not comment on private meetings.

However, Bailey is on the record as saying that the Online Harms Act should be amended to cover financial fraud.

The news comes as pandemic has seen criminal gangs take advantage of people’s confusion and anxiety about the virus.

According to UK Finance, in the first half of 2020 a total of £207.8 million was lost to authorised fraud, much of which was cryptocurrency related.

The Online Harms Bill, first proposed in April 2019 by Theresa May’s government, proposed new guidelines about removing illegal content including child sex abuse, terrorist material and suicide promotion.

However, the bill as it currently stands would not cover financial fraud, which falls under the remit of the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA).

Ofcom is set to act as regulator of the Online Harms Bill, which would give them the power to fine internet companies up to 10 per cent of their turnover for failures regarding harmful online content.
Internet companies such as Google and Facebook can profit from online fraud if these scammers pay for high rankings in search results.

The FCA chief executive Nikhil Rathi echoed these reported sentiments earlier in the month when addressing MPs.

“The single thing I think, that is not a panacea but would help, is for investment to be included in the Online Harms Bill to enable us to work much more enthusiastically and rapidly with the large search firms, social media firms [and] for them to take responsibility also for the promotion that are put on their websites,” said Rathi.

He added: “We’ve made that recommendation to the government very clearly.”

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