FRAUD Project: Combatting Human Trafficking for Financial and Benefit Fraud 

The Council of the Baltic Sea States (CBSS) and its partners have recently launched the FRAUD project, an initiative designed to address human trafficking linked to financial and benefit fraud in the Baltic Sea Region.

“Human trafficking for financial and benefit fraud have emerged as significant challenges in the Baltic Sea Region,” said Veikko Mäkelä, Project Officer at the CBSS Task Force against Trafficking in Human Beings (TF-THB), who oversees the project at the CBSS. “Traffickers exploit vulnerable individuals to defraud welfare systems in our countries.”

The FRAUD initiative, short for “Tackling Financial and Benefit Fraud in the Baltic Sea Region”, aims to shed light on these issues by considering the victim’s perspective and advocating for a comprehensive approach to identifying and combatting these crimes.

Spearheaded by the CBSS Task Force against Trafficking in Human Beings, the initiative focuses on raising awareness, building capacity, and fostering cooperation to address the link between human trafficking and welfare-related crimes.

Key objectives of the FRAUD project include:

• Conducting a study on financial and benefit fraud in the Baltic Sea Region, along with creating victim profiles to better understand the dynamics of these crimes.
• Hosting four online national workshops in partner countries (Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Sweden) to support national dialogue and gather information for the study.
• Organising a study trip to the United Kingdom to learn about financial and benefit fraud and identify best practices.
• Hosting an online webinar focused on disseminating project results and raising awareness about benefit and financial fraud in the Baltic Sea Region.
• Facilitating a workshop at the anti-trafficking coordinators’ level and drafting a planning document for further cooperation to tackle financial and benefit fraud.

The FRAUD project is a collaborative effort involving key institutions and organisations in the CBSS member states. Partners include the CBSS as the lead partner, the University of Tartu (Estonia), the Ministry of Interior (Latvia), the National Assistance System for Victims of Human Trafficking (Finland), the Swedish Civil Society platform (Sweden), and the Swedish Social Insurance Agency (Sweden).

The initiative is scheduled to run from November 2023 to January 2025, aiming to produce evidence-based information, legal conceptualisations, and knowledge to effectively address financial and benefit fraud.

For more information about the FRAUD initiative and its activities, please visit the project’s page.